


Trust But Verify

by Boi_Ginny



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angry Steve Rogers, Angst, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Blood and Violence, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Canon Universe, M/M, Non-Penetrative Sex, POV Steve Rogers, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, Rings, SHIELD, Smoking, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-02-09 22:50:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 52,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18647710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boi_Ginny/pseuds/Boi_Ginny
Summary: Between the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Mostly canon "What if?"After D.C., Steve moves to New York, and finds out that the man he hopes is still Bucky Barnes, his former lover and best friend, has followed him.As he tries to continue work with the Avengers dismantling Hydra, Steve has to come to terms with the Winter Soldier, and what Bucky's return means for him in every aspect of his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work in progress. I have the whole story outlined and I know where I'm going but it'll take some time.
> 
> I decided that in other stories I wrote, Steve was entirely too confident around Bucky post-Winter Soldier. I wanted to scare him. So here we are.
> 
> This is going to get rough before it gets better.

On the mornings that become the worst days, Steve wakes confused at the windows. He sees the city through them and wonders why everything is so bright.

He calls out for clarification from the man he knows must be beside him. Bucky’s name clears his lips and in the answering silence from the cold side of his bed, Steve remembers.

And even Sam gives him a wide berth for the rest of the day, frightened away by the ghosts in his eyes.

The official channels Romanov gave him after D.C. have dried up but the unofficial ones give him whispers. Tony’s lawyers were good for something and being a superhero was good for merchandising and cash in Steve’s pocket and _that_ was good for information. The street preachers and buskers and unafraid homeless take Steve’s money and take a selfie and tell him they’ve seen that creepy guy who doesn’t talk and who sounds like machinery when he moves, who skulks around Steve’s apartment building at night and vanishes in the morning. No one knows where.

But it’s just a matter of time. Steve pulls his shoes on when the sun goes down. He doesn’t particularly want to sleep anyway.

He runs alone with his hood up and hat down and sees shadows in the fading daylight. The same shadow again and again, the same shape, following at the same distance. Blinking rearranges the shadows into light poles, dumpsters, stacks of boxes.

He slows to a walk and glances down alleyways. A door opens and a bag of trash is ejected from the back of a restaurant.

“Come on, Buck,” Steve mutters. “I’m not hiding.”

Glass pops and glitters and the light in the next alley winks out. Steve steps into the mouth of it with his lips and fingers tingling, all his blood pounding in his chest. Stray light illuminates nothing and serves only to embolden the shadows.

And when they move it’s too fast for him to see.

Darkness slams into his shoulder and spins him into the wall. Steel pins the back of his head. Brick opens his cheek in a bright line suddenly warm and sticky.

“Who are you?”

The voice is twisted and grating. Steve tries to push away from the wall and turn to face it. The steel wraps into his hair and yanks his head back and slams it forward, rattling his skull.

“Who are you?”

Flashes of light chase dark splotches across Steve’s eyes. His tongue rolls trying to respond.

“You know me…”

The force of the steel grinds bone into brick. Breath behind him is harsh, louder than the machinery whining in his ear.

“You can’t be him. He’s dead.”

“Bucky…”

The pressure on his skull releases and the pitch of the machinery whines higher. Then explodes forward again into his temple and smashes pain through his head. His body under it goes slack and crumples down the wall onto the concrete. Gray edged darkness irises his vision down to a pinpoint and he can only hear brief footsteps retreating.

When his head clears, the alley is empty. Steve staggers to his feet and wipes blood off of his face. Step by slow step, he walks home. The shadows don’t follow him.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve stumbles through his door and leans heavily against it. Tears and blood mix in the palms of his hands.

He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and thumbs at it, locks his door, walks his hand along the wall to his kitchen sink. The faucet runs and the phone rings. He splashes water on his face and the phone connects.

“Hello?”

“Hey Tasha. Sorry to call so late.”

The other end of the line is silent for a moment. His voice is barely steady. And no one calls Romanov “Tasha.”

“Oh that’s okay! What’s up?”

She forces brightness. This line isn’t secure and this must be important.

“I was just thinking, it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. You should come over some time.”

_Get over here as soon as you can._

“It has been a while. I think I can squeeze you in to my busy schedule.”

_On my way._

“Great. Looking forward to it.”

“Sure, Steve. Have a good night.”

“You too.”

He drops his phone on the counter and grabs for a towel. His heart still hammers and his head still swims, tripping his feet. He changes his shirt and throws the grimy one in the trash next to the laundry bin. Not worth trying to clean blood out of it.

Trembling fingers fish further in his dresser drawer until they close on a ring of brass. Steve hasn’t seen it since D.C. The last time he just had to find it and know it’s still there.

Time has wrapped a dark patina around it. He takes steel wool out of his toolbox and sits down to polish the ring, badly but the best he can do. Steel wool leaves smudges on his fingers and his fingers leave prints on the brass.

SHIELD thought it was his when they found him in the ice, found the ring on his dog tags under his uniform. Coulson gave it back to him with a mournful nod and asked about the girl he’d left behind. Steve just shrugged. Said he didn’t want to talk about it. It didn’t make a difference. Bucky was dead. Coulson didn’t press.

There are marks in the metal from its old shape. A discarded bit no one would miss, from the factory where Bucky worked before the war, tooled down smooth in his free time. Bucky was always good with his hands. Steve swaps the steel wool for the towel and wipes his prints from the gleaming metal. Brass cleans up nice, Bucky had said. Polishes into gold. He was right.

Steve can’t help it but he slides the ring onto the third finger of his left hand. It fits, now. But it isn’t his.

His was on Bucky’s tags.

Knuckles rap on his door. He opens it for Natasha.

“You made good time.”

She blinks and her eyes narrow, but she gets through the door before she speaks.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Would you believe I was mugged?”

“No.”

Steve takes a deep breath, and leans on the wall. Still easier than trying to stand.

“He’s in the city, Nat. I think he followed me from D.C. And he’s watching me.”

Natasha’s jaw sets hard. Steve doesn’t have to tell her who he is.

“I think he’s doing more than watching you. Let me help.”

“No. Not you. You don’t need to deal with him again. And please don’t tell Sam.”

Natasha is subtle. But she’s looking at the ring. Steve forgot to take it off. He shoves his hand in his pocket.

“Please don’t tell Sam about that either.”

“You never told him?”

“I never told anyone.”

Steve could never trust the way Natasha's mask slipped around him, and he didn't appreciate the fleeting pity that crossed her face. But at least it made her human for a moment.

“Alright, Steve. Why did you call me if you don’t want my help?”

“Can you still get in touch with Maria Hill?”

“Yes.”

“Would you tell her… I need a favor. Please. Tell her I’m gonna need backup. A lot of it.”


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha nods slowly.

“I should be offended you only called me over to get another woman’s phone number,” she says. But she pulls out her phone and starts to dial.

“Funny,” Steve says. “Considering how many you’ve thrown at me.”

“Hill is working for Stark now. You want Tony to find out about this?”

Steve shakes his head and stands away from the wall. It was a mistake. He tries to hide the flare of pain.

“You know we can’t tell Tony. There’s gotta be…Fury had a thousand secrets and a thousand places to hide them. Weapons, agents we can trust, a bunker, somewhere just to get him off the streets… It can’t have all disappeared in a few months.”

“Understood.”

Natasha lifts a hand to her own face and traces a line in the air mimicking the livid line on Steve's.

“You're still bleeding,” she says.

Steve wipes at his cheek. So he is.

“You ought to see to that,” Natasha says.

“I’ll mend. I’m feeling better already.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

Her eyes refocus into the listening distance and she speaks into her phone. “Agent Hill? It’s Romanov. I have a situation in New York that Captain Rogers wants you to know about.”

Natasha waves a hand at him toward the bathroom, gestures at her face again meaning his, and takes her conversation to his balcony. Fine. Steve moves off to get a look at himself in his bathroom mirror that he really does not want and administer basic first aid. Cuts on the face just will not stop bleeding. Superglue is useful for so many things around the house. And when he walks back into his main room Natasha is closing the balcony door behind her.

“You were right of course,” she says. “Fury's still AWOL, and Hill says she can't pull a team from Stark's security without raising red flags, but she's got contingencies. She’s scrambling some ex-agents she trusts. Off the books.”

“SHIELD has always been good at ‘off the books,’” Steve says.

“I’m putting her activation code on your phone,” Natasha says, presumably doing just that in his kitchen. “Send it and the team will converge on your location.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry to drag you back into this. But it seems my old friends aren’t talking to me anymore.”

“Tell me about it.”

She takes two glasses out of his cabinet, fills them with water, and brings them to the table. That’s a little invasive but Steve could use it.

“Good thing you have a few new friends,” Natasha says.

She’s right. It’s some comfort. Steve smiles thinly and sits.

“You worked with SHIELD for a couple of years,” she continues, sitting beside him. “I spent half my life in the agency. Hill, even longer. We had no idea about Hydra. Or Barnes. It's a little embarrassing for us. We're good here.”

“Thanks. Again.”

They sip at the water and Steve waits. It would be rude to ask Natasha to leave now that she’s accomplished what he asked her to do but… 

“You still think you can talk to him?” Natasha asks.

… now she’s going to start asking questions.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “But I had to try.”

“Because you two were…”

Steve sighs, and remembers to remove the ring. If he doesn’t take it off now he’ll forget and be wearing it for days. Again. And making his mornings that much worse.

Natasha already figured it out. And if there’s anyone who can keep a secret it’s a liar.

“Yes. And no,” Steve says. “The history is mostly right. We were thick as thieves our whole lives. Being lovers besides was… all the same thing.”

“Well, now I know why you never caught any of those women I threw at you.”

Steve wraps the ring in a tightly clenched fist and reigns his voice in from anger to warning.

“Go carefully, Romanov.”

Natasha swallows and nods.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

She reaches across the table, and doesn’t touch his arm but lays her hand down beside it.

“I know you said you didn’t want my help,” she says. “But if he knows where you live… You gotta sleep, Steve. And you’ve got a really nice TV.”

Steve scoffs.

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“How about a spotter?”

She’s got a point. And he’s probably got a concussion. He’d do well for a lie down and word on the street was he’d been watched for weeks already and been safe thus far. Maybe it would give them both some peace of mind.

“Alright,” Steve says. “I won’t kick you out. Just call Hill if you have to. Don't try to take him yourself.”

“No promises.”

She stays and stays quiet. She quickly assesses his apartment with new eyes primed for combat and Steve doesn’t intervene. He leaves her watching his television and has a smoke out his bedroom window. It’d be better to be on the balcony but he’s about done with answering questions about his leftover personal choices from before. When the cigarette is out he lies down. And when he’s worn himself out crying he sleeps.

*

_The adjoining building is not a good vantage point. It’s the only vantage point. He can see._

_He can see the man smoking out the window, someone else, there he is, the man from before. Orders are orders were target locked but he’s someone else, always smoked out the window but that was before he was another someone else._

_The man cried out in pain but he cried out when he put his hands on someone else, on Steve…_

_Steve…_

_“I need to report a glitch,” he says aloud._

_When he puts his hands on Steve he cries out… Says his name but not like that._

_When he had his orders and put his hands on someone else he cried out in pain but when Bucky…_

_Bucky…_

_When Bucky puts his hands on Steve he cries out… not like that…_

_Glitch._

_The man is a glitch, the man in the window. The image does not stabilize. Steve, Captain America, Steven G. Rogers gave his life for his country in nineteen forty four and never… came… back…_

_“I need to report a glitch,” he says. But his communicator is down, gone, washed away. Fire at the other end of the line._


	4. Chapter 4

When Steve gets out of bed the next morning Natasha lets herself out with only a brief moment of eye contact and a nod. Though he shouldn’t be, he’s surprised she stayed the whole night.

Dress. Coffee. Cigarette, on the balcony. Summer sun. He’s stable on his feet and the cut on his face looks days old already. Never really going to get used to his body being unconnected from time the way other people experience it.

He looks down over his railing at his neighborhood with the eyes Natasha used on his apartment. Where are the corners he can’t see around? Where are the shadows the deepest? Where would an ambush be waiting?

He chain smokes half the pack before he thinks to stop. Good luck being a soldier for more than five minutes without picking up the habit. Doctors couldn’t even tell him if it was possible for him to get cancer… 

The roofs of the lower buildings are jumbles of antennas and water reservoirs. Would any of them be good nests? Steve hadn’t been trained as a sniper in the war. That was Bucky’s beat. Steve stomped into trouble big and loud. Bucky knew the silence and shadows. Steve wishes he’d learned.

He starts when he hears knocking on his door. And when he opens it Sam is standing in his hallway with his arms crossed.

“Hey, Sam?” Steve says. Sam is not unwelcome but also generally not unannounced.

“Really?” Sam says, raising his eyebrows. “‘Hey, Sam?’ Where were you this morning? You’re not answering your phone.”

Phone’s on the kitchen counter.

Fuck. The V.A. group.

He needs to keep his phone on him. He needs to be able to send Hill the code.

He told Sam he’d put in an appearance with his support group.

“I… Something came up,” Steve says.

No, he was just too distracted and forgot. The lie is slightly painful.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. At least that’s the truth. “I hope your group wasn’t too disappointed.”

“Oh I told them you’d show up next week with the shield.”

Steve smiles and shakes his head.

“Thanks, Sam.”

“You gonna tell me about it?”

Hells no. The Winter Soldier ripped Sam’s wings off and tossed him out of the sky.

“I can’t. I wish I… No, to be honest, I don’t wish I could. Sorry.”

“Yeah. Right. You eaten? You look like shit.”

“I really appreciate that, man.”

Steve considers. The neighborhood is a mess. Fighting in cities is incredibly inadvisable. But it’s daylight. No one has seen Bucky during the day. And if Steve was Bucky… After last night he’d be laying low. Bucky had never made his presence known. Steve came after him.

“No I haven’t eaten,” Steve says.

“Make it up to me and buy me a hot dog from the guy downstairs.”

“Fair enough.”

Steve fetches his phone off the kitchen counter.

Only two of the people in the long elbowing line recognize him. They don’t make much fuss. Steve pays for hot dogs and they eat them standing on the sidewalk.

The security of sunlight only goes so far. Steve looks hard down every alley, notes every fire escape. He reaches back and taps the outlines of his phone in his pocket, again, again just to be sure. Calling a team into this crowded sidewalk would get a lot of people caught in crossfire… 

A delivery driver kicks over a trash can into the one next to it and the clanging steel makes Steve flinch and adrenaline chill his veins.

“Fuck me…” Steve mutters.

“I thought you were the one said that wasn’t a good idea,” Sam says, smiling.

Steve doesn’t look at him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Sam clears his throat.

“Okay, not in a joking mood. Seriously Steve, what’s going on? You don’t just bail.”

Steve fights down anger at the jolt of fear, at his own heart for starting to race without getting his brain involved. It was just a stupid trash can.

“All I can say is I’m sorry,” Steve says.

“Yeah you said that,” Sam says. “So I guess I’ll see you next week if not before.”

“I’ll remember this time. And I’ll bring the shield.”

Sam flips a mock salute over his forehead. Steve smiles tight. Sam walks away, and Steve goes back inside.

And standing alone stepping in over alert circles in his quiet apartment, not for the first time he misses the job. Soldier or SHIELD agent, procedures and orders gave structure to a day. If only the people giving him orders hadn’t been giving him bad ones.

Being in a base surrounded by armed folks trained in violence wouldn’t hurt either.


	5. Chapter 5

Days pass.

The fallout from D.C. continues to land on Steve. Panels and subcommittees ask questions he answers briefly and carefully, and the next group of severe looking men and women ask them all over again. He takes the subway to the boxing gym afterwards to punch things that can’t feel pain until his arms get tired. He wants to believe the lettered agencies of the U.S. government have some ability to finish routing out Hydra. He doesn’t really.

The basement walls of the gym snap back harsh echoes. The spattering water of the shower sounds like cracking ice. And the subway is so fast, now, it feels like it’s flying.

Street level informants who have taken Steve’s money for information before take his money again but have no further information. Paying doesn’t cost him. Unanswered questions do. 

Bucky has gone to ground. Understandable. And he hasn’t hurt anyone but Steve. People talk about that kind of violence.

But if Steve doesn’t know where to send Maria Hill’s team… His phone sits heavy in his back pocket and he visits it with his fingers as often as Bucky's ring in his front pocket. He has to be ready, always ready, to talk or to fight, whatever it takes. But he can’t be the boy who cried wolf calling in a strike against the truck unloading on the sidewalk because of the scrape of steel on concrete.

Natasha arrives uncalled at sundown and leaves at sunup. Her influence shows on Steve’s Netflix account. He hasn’t the heart to tell her he doesn’t want the extra pair of eyes, that she isn’t doing any good. She has scars to show for her encounters with the Winter Soldier. She wouldn’t be able to sleep either knowing he’s in the city. They go through a lot of delivery Chinese food.

“Natasha?” Steve says, opening his refrigerator and observing its contents with mild frustration. “I appreciate your concern being here, but let me know next time before you drink the last of my Coke.”

“I don’t drink Coke,” Natasha says, kicking her feet up on the coffee table. “The sugar isn’t worth the heartburn.”

“I could’ve sworn…”

Steve looks down at the recycling bin and counts. Every bottle he bought is there, empty.

That son of a bitch.

“What’s wrong?” Natasha says.

Every bottle is there. That son of a bitch didn’t even take the bottles with him.

“Nothing…”

Steve opens his cabinets. He doesn’t keep an accurate running inventory but he’s pretty sure he bought chocolate protein bars that aren’t there anymore.

“Chinese again or you want to actually try that new pizza place?” Natasha says.

“Flip a coin,” Steve mutters. He isn’t hungry.

Bucky got into Steve’s apartment, during the day when neither he nor Natasha was there, and stayed long enough to finish a Coke, more than once, and didn’t bother to hide it. The skin on the back of Steve’s neck itches with the remnants of Bucky’s presence crawling through his home. 

“Pizza,” Natasha says. “You sure you’re okay?”

“It’s been a long week,” Steve says.

What was Bucky doing? What did he want? If Steve called Maria Hill and had the team stake out his apartment… Bucky isn’t that stupid. He would notice and wouldn’t come back. Fuck.

“Any updates?” Natasha asks.

“No,” Steve lies.

He can only eat enough of the pizza to keep concern off of Natasha’s face. And can’t sleep at all. He doesn’t know what Bucky has touched and can feel his hands on everything.

When Natasha leaves the next morning, Steve opens his balcony door, and speaks loudly to the neighborhood and the only ears that would understand.

"Alright," he says. "That's enough. If you wanted me dead you could've let the river do it. If you want to talk I'm right here."

Steve leaves the door open, sits down on his couch, and waits, sitting straight but shivering slightly.

He waits until the sun has climbed up the sky, until the silence and the couch cushions have claimed him, and unwilling but unknowing he falls asleep.

*

_"If you wanted me dead you could've let the river do it," someone else says._

_Doesn't want... him? Him dead?_

_He could've let the river kill him. Kill who?_

_The files in that apartment... His face, Carter's face, Dugan's face. Captain America. Captain America was in Italy, Captain America fought with him, looked like Steve but he was someone else, almost, mostly someone else._

_The records and the pencils in that apartment... Steve's things. Things that look like Steve's things._

_Captain America was Steve, this is Captain America, is Steve?_

_Everyone knew Captain America was dead._

_Everyone knew Captain America came back._

_Everyone knew Captain America was Steve Rogers._

_Bucky Barnes knew Steve Rogers._

_"If you want to talk I'm right here."_

_Who? Talk to who?_

_It takes all day to decide. Bucky watches him wait. Bucky watches him sleep. He looks like... someone._

_He looks like someone he wants to talk to._


	6. Chapter 6

Steve is awakened not by a sound but by the soft absence of sound around a body that is very carefully silent, blocking the ambient noise of the street from his open balcony door.

He opens his eyes, sits up and turns his head. And darkness stands on his threshold.

It must be him. Logically. Under the black hoodie and frame of lank hair hiding most of a face ducked down and peering warily up at Steve. Steve knows those storm blue eyes as well as he knows his own. And his stillness fills the room like deep water on Steve's chest as he takes a breath.

“You wanna talk?” Steve says.

Bucky swallows and parts his lips. He blinks rapidly and closes his mouth again. Steve drops his feet to the floor. He can’t reach his pockets.

“I know what happened after the train,” Steve says. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

Steve shifts his weight onto his feet and begins to stand. Bucky straightens abruptly and steps forward into the room. He draws up his shoulders and his left hand claws out, humming under tension. Steve freezes in place.

“We’re just talking here, Buck,” Steve says, and raises his hands.

Bucky stops. His eyes narrow and flick around the room. When he looks back to Steve his eyes seem focused on a point behind Steve’s head, looking through him.

“You look like him,” Bucky says.

Steve nods slowly.

“I am him,” Steve says.

“Steve.”

His name is just a whisper through Bucky’s teeth, without inflection. Steve begins again to stand, hands raised, and Bucky doesn’t move.

“I need to report-” Bucky starts, and stops himself.

“Bucky?”

“Why aren’t you…”

Bucky shakes his head and drops his shoulders. He takes a deep breath and blinks hard. Then his eyes focus clear on Steve, and widen in surprise, and Steve’s heart slams into his throat.

“Steve…”

“God dammit Bucky.”

“How did you survive?” Bucky says.

“Erskine,” Steve blurts out. “The serum, I don’t… I don’t really know.”

“Jesus… You’re alive.”

“Apparently.”

Bucky raises his left hand and pushes his hood back. He swipes his hand down his face and huffs out his breath like it’s just him, like it’s just been a long day and he’s just letting it out now he’s home. 

Steve’s hand hovers at his hip. He knows he ought to move for his phone, send Hill the code, bring in the team and subdue the Winter Soldier.

He knows what he ought. But what he _wants_ is to move for Bucky’s ring in his other pocket and show him that. Ask him if he remembers.

“All the time you’ve been in New York,” Steve says, “you didn’t know it was me?”

“It was you…” Bucky says. “I know who you were…”

That’s not enough. Steve’s hand can’t commit.

“What?” Steve says.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I knew it couldn’t be right,” Bucky says. “It didn’t take but it isn’t right.”

“Buck? Whatever’s still going on with you, we can figure it out.”

Bucky stills, and stares. He breathes so shallow the only motion in his body is his eyes and Steve could be looking at a photograph. A torn photograph.

“I knew you when you were someone else,” Bucky says.

“It’s just me, Buck.”

Bucky’s sudden strides catch Steve off guard and he stumbles away from the couch. Bucky holds his right arm tucked close to his side, and it doesn’t swing to balance his steps.

“Hold on,” Steve says. “Back off.”

Bucky continues to advance. His teeth bare and his eyes cloud over, looking _through_ again. Steve reluctantly chooses his back pocket and snatches up his phone. He only wants the ring to be the right choice.

“Which one?” Bucky says.

“What? There’s only the one of me.”

Bucky is within arm’s reach. Steve thumbs Hill’s command into his phone. Bucky’s hands thrust out and close on Steve’s arms. Bucky’s right arm doesn’t have the range of motion, doesn’t have the grip.

Steve broke it on the helicarrier. It hasn’t set properly.

But his left is enough to drive Steve back into the wall. He drops his phone and it snaps on the floor.

“I know who you were when you died,” Bucky says. “Who are you?”

Bucky grasps at Steve’s arms and his shoulders. Bucky’s hands slide up Steve's neck and bracket his face and he leans close, holds tight, and Steve shudders. Warm and cold. Thunder in his eyes. Could be working up to trying to kill him or trying to kiss him. Steve’s stomach turns.

“Stop this Buck,” Steve says.

He turns his face away.

“Tell me!” Bucky demands and shakes Steve by the sides of his head.

“Steve! I’m just Steve!”

He had to be ready. Ready to talk, or ready to fight. Whatever it took. He is ready, when Bucky lets go of his face and takes a wild swing at him. Sick, and desolate, but ready. The fist whirs past his ear.

“Please! Stop!” Steve says.

Steve twists away from the wall, and catches the mechanical fist in both of his hands when it flies at him again. He sweeps his foot into Bucky’s knee expecting him to drop but the leg he connects with is rooted and doesn’t budge, like trying to kick over a telephone pole.

“I don’t want to fight you!” Steve says.

That is the God’s honest truth and it is very, very hard to do it anyway. Very very hard to fight someone he doesn’t want to hurt.

He tries to dodge more than he strikes back. Buying time. He has to believe the command was sent and Hill was listening, that the team is inbound if he can just keep the Winter Soldier in one place…

A spinning kick Steve can’t avoid takes him in the chest and knocks him down on his back, through his coffee table, splinters after his fall. Bucky lands with his knees in Steve’s ribs. Steve feels his pummeling land like it’s coming in over the radio, miles away. 

He growls in a language Steve doesn’t understand, erratic and alien. Steve can’t raise Bucky’s weight on his chest to breathe. He can’t punch up as hard as Bucky can punch back down.

This can’t be him. Bucky is dead and this can’t be him.

Steve’s hand lashes out and connects with Bucky’s right elbow. He feels the crack more than he hears it. But he hears the scream.

This can’t be hi-

Steve rolls to the side and scrambles away from him. Bucky bends over his right arm and turns saucer wide eyes up at Steve in agonzied shock.

“Who are you?” Bucky cries.

Steve, stunned, drops his mouth open, and says nothing.

And the next few seconds last for days.

Glass breaks. A projectile flies through the window. Bucky whips around to catch it in his left hand. It explodes in arcs of electricity twining up his arm. The machinery sparks and drops.

Jets roar. A quinjet lowers from above to hover at Steve’s balcony.

Wood shatters. Rifle barrels enter where Steve’s door had been. 

Shots ring. Many of them, Steve can’t count, many, hit Bucky and vanish in a blue flash without an accompanying red spray. 

One hits Steve’s shoulder. It’s instantly freezing cold and weakening his arm.

Bucky tries to climb to his feet but slows and drops in fragments, legs and spine collapsing, and he sags over to the floor.

Black body armor with white logos carries the rifles. Some of them hold barrels trained on Bucky and some of them clamp restraints at his wrists and ankles. They shout at each other. 

They lift Bucky bodily off the floor. They carry him between them to Steve’s balcony and the lowering ramp of the quinjet. They lift him into it. The trained barrels follow and surround him.

The ramp of the quinet closes. Jets whine and the plane turns, rises, and disappears.

It's over in seconds.

And the silence afterwards lasts for years.

*

“Captain Rogers?”

Steve looks up from his floor. Maria Hill stands in his living room. Clint Barton swings down to his balcony and walks in behind her, stowing his bow.

“Are you hurt, sir?” Hill asks.

Steve points out his balcony, and up.

“His right arm is broken,” Steve says.

“Understood.” Hill taps the communicator in her ear and repeats. “Transport be advised, our guest has a broken right arm.”

Clint offers a hand down to Steve to pull him up.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks.

“Nat filled me in,” Clint says.

Steve nods. As soon as he can fathom carrying on a reasonable conversation he is going to have words with her about that. He can just about acknowledge the fact that this could’ve gone much worse, without Clint’s aim and his gadget arrows. Not in the mood to thank him for it just yet.

“Where are you taking him?” Steve asks Hill.

“I’ll send you the location,” Hill says. “You’ll have clearance.”

“Clearance? I just wanted to get him off the streets.”

“We can do better than that, sir,” Hill says.

Steve closes his eyes and leans on his kitchen counter.

“We?” Steve says.

“SHIELD, sir,” Hill replies. “SHIELD is still operational. I’m sorry, sir. It was need to know. We’ll fill you in on location.”

Blood pounds in Steve’s ears. Need to know… 

“Get out,” Steve says.

Hill pauses. Then makes the right decision.

“Yessir,” she says. And her footsteps leave.

“Clint?” Steve says.

“Getting out,” Clint says. “But we’ll talk.”

Steve shakes his head. He can’t fathom that either.

His door is ruined. Clint can’t close it behind him.

Steve opens his eyes and hears it all again when he sees the splinters.

He takes a deep breath to test his ribs and they fail badly. Cracked. He doubles over.

The shockwave of Bucky’s bone breaking in his hand runs up his arm.

He barely makes it to his toilet before he throws up.


	7. Chapter 7

*

_Freezing rest. Not sleep._

_Seeing and hearing. Not moving and feeling._

_Boots and jets. But he’s not in charge._

_Something went wrong._

_He went wrong._

_His words were wrong. His hands were wrong._

_Wrong again. Vicious wrong._

_Freezing rest. How long this time?_

_Can he try again?_

*

“Steve?”

Natasha’s voice. Steve spits out a mouthful of red tinged water in his bathroom sink.

“Here.”

Natasha’s delicate steps pick through his living room. He watches her survey the room and their eyes meet over the wreckage. Her face remains impassive but it’s a near thing.

“Later,” Natasha says. “My car is downstairs. You don’t want to stay here.”

Steve nods. He lets her thought become his with a lack of his own. He doesn’t want to stay here. That’s simple.

He takes a clean shirt and his toothbrush. Natasha takes him to her apartment. She drives safe. And she doesn’t ask questions.

Natasha’s couch is comfortable enough. Nothing would be truly comfortable until he’s healed again. But exhaustion weighs more than distress. He sleeps through the worst of it.

When he wakes up Natasha shares a pot of coffee with him. He thinks to say, “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she says.

Her toaster pops. At her kitchen table she shares bagels and peanut butter with him. He says “Thanks.” She nods.

Steve turns his coffee cup in his hands. He runs his tongue along his teeth. Can’t taste blood anymore.

“I talked to Clint, so you don’t have to tell me what happened,” Natasha says.

“What did you go and call Clint for?” Steve says.

“You wouldn’t let me take Barnes out myself.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know.”

End of. Wandering down the twisting lanes of Natasha’s thought processes is not simple.

“Clint says they’re keeping him sedated,” Natasha says.

“Good.”

End of. It’s out of Steve’s hands. He said all he wanted was to keep Bucky in one place, make sure he couldn’t hurt anyone else. He said that was all he wanted. Mission accomplished.

“Are you going to see him?” Natasha asks.

“I will,” Steve says.

He’s sedated. No sense in going to watch him sleep. Steve tells himself there’s no sense in that.

Natasha pushes away from the table.

“I have appointments,” Natasha says. “Don’t feel bad about using the shower.”

“I owe you.”

“No you don’t.”

She sets a spare key on the counter.

“Lock up if you leave. And Sam called.”

Steve glances at the clock. He’ll be late to the V.A. meeting but he can make it. He’s in poor shape. But Sam is important. That’s simple.

“Got it.”

He doesn’t feel bad about using Natasha’s shower. He locks up when he leaves.

No one on the subway recognizes him. He doesn’t think about why.

He is late to the V.A., and he doesn’t have the shield. But he said he’d be here.

He stops at the door to the meeting room and Sam sees him over the heads of the attendees. Sam blanches, and then glares. Someone is talking but Sam excuses himself from the podium. He fields Steve at the door and hustles him around a corner.

“No. Hell no,” Sam says. “You’re not going in there. They don’t need to see Captain America looking like this.”

Steve shakes his head. He hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t looked in a mirror.

“What do you want me to do?” Steve says.

“Tell me, right now, what the hell is going on.”

How many people know now? Steve, Maria Hill, Natasha, Clint. Already too many.

But Sam is important.

“SHIELD has Bucky Barnes in custody,” Steve says.

Sam folds his arms on his chest.

“I beg your pardon?” Sam says.

“He followed me from D.C. He was in my apartment last night. A SHIELD team captured him.”

“After he kicked the shit out of you,” Sam snarls.

“Sam…”

“And last week too?”

“Listen, Sam…”

“No, you listen. That guy you knew? I don’t know that guy. But I know the guy I’ve seen, and that guy is fucked.”

“That’s enough,” Steve snaps.

“Is it enough? Is it enough for you? Or you think you’re gonna let him put you in the hospital again?”

Pain stabs through Steve’s chest. He’s panting hard. Gritting his teeth, because there’s nothing he can say. Because Sam has sense, and Steve has Bucky’s ring in his pocket.

Sam backs away from him.

“You better go,” Sam says.

“Yeah.”

Steve leaves the way he came. No one recognizes him on the subway. He’s pretty sure he knows why.

The subway route to the boxing gym isn’t appealing. He knows what he’ll feel if he strikes, even if it’s just a bag. He takes the route that lets him off closest to the right span of the beach and walks the rest of the way. 

The coast has changed but not enough. There’s still an isolated little bend in the beach, out of sight of the pier and far enough from the nice hotel that no one has their towels down here. Steve sits on the shore and watches the waves tug at the sand. He takes Bucky’s ring out of his pocket and tumbles it in his fingers without looking at it.

Maybe it would’ve been the right choice.

They had been here, just about here, walking barefoot in the breakers, the day Bucky held it out, this ring and one smaller, for Steve. Bucky said they knew better than a priest and the ocean could be their witness because she’d seen about everything and wouldn’t give a shit about a couple of young idiots in love.

For richer or for poorer, even if it will definitely be for poorer? In sickness and in health, even if it’s more sickness than health? Til death do us part.

Wearing it that day on the walk home made Steve feel completely exposed though he knew he’d feel more naked without it. And when they made love that night on blankets on their floor Steve marvelled at the shine of his ring through the strands of Bucky’s dark hair woven in his fingers.

They wore them when they were at home. Hid them in pockets in public. Hung them on their dog tags when they went to war.

Steve closes Bucky’s ring in his hand, and for a moment he can imagine it describing an arc through the air and vanishing in the water as far away as he can throw it. 

But he can’t. It’s not his to throw away. That’s simple.

His shadow elongates on the sand. Lights come on over the pier. He slips Bucky’s ring back into his pocket and stands. He meanders across the city to his apartment.

The landlord replaced his door. But he doesn’t want to stay here. One more clean shirt. Natasha won’t mind. She gave him a spare key. He finds his way back.

When Natasha comes home she asks him, “Did you go to see him?”

And Steve says, “No. I will.”


	8. Chapter 8

Days pass. Wounds heal. Some wounds heal.

Steve tries to stay out during the day. The wet slap of fists keeps him away from the gym. He jogs the same ten blocks around Natasha’s apartment until he feels like he’s wearing a rut in the concrete. He takes his sketchbook with him and tries to get back to basics with a maple tree and a little bench in the park around the corner.

He calls Sam. Sam doesn’t answer. Steve feels like he ought to apologize but he doesn’t know what he ought to apologize for. So he doesn’t leave a message after the tone. He sees the alert on his phone for the messages Maria Hill has sent him. His chest tightens, and he dismisses the alert.

Things don’t get awkward with Natasha until Steve has brought over enough shirts that they’re taking up space. Then the two of them start getting in each other’s way and snapping at each other over the coffee. Steve weighs the cost of that versus the cost of clearing out the broken coffee table in his own apartment and trying to sleep alone without Natasha tapping at her computer until the middle of the night, awake when he’s asleep. He decides that he will decide later. And decides the same thing again.

He calls Sam. Sam doesn’t answer. Steve buys hot dogs for himself.

With his phone in his hand he sees the alert again for the messages Maria Hill has sent him, and again his chest tightens. But it feels more distant over the passing days. Curiosity and obligation approach. He was the one who got Maria Hill involved. He needs to be involved. And he needs to know.

One message is an address in New Jersey with no further information. The next is a phone number for a car service. The last says simply, “He’s awake.” It’s two days old.

Steve calls the car service. The dispatcher asks him where he is and where he’s going, and when he gives the address in New Jersey the dispatcher’s tone of voice changes to the bright and deferential one Steve remembers hearing from the privates circling around him in the war. Steve sighs.

A black sedan arrives promptly. The driver seems a little stocky for his shirt. Steve knows what a bulletproof vest looks like.

“Good afternoon sir,” the driver says, and gives him a professional nod.

“Afternoon, agent,” Steve says, and climbs in the back of the car. They don’t speak again.

Some dozing hours later the car stops outside a warehouse in one row of a garden of smokestacks, apparently abandoned, but Steve knows better than that. Graffiti covers most of the concrete that hasn’t fallen away from the rebar underneath but the surveillance camera in the corner looks very new. The driver leads Steve inside, pulls an ID card out of his jacket and holds it to a section of the wall. The wall slides open and reveals an elevator. Steve sighs.

The elevator descends smoothly and its doors open on a floor plucked from a hospital, all fluorescent lights and white tile. The driver stays on the elevator, but nods Steve out of it. Agents in scrubs, or doctors employed by SHIELD, Steve supposes that here they would be the same thing, go about their business with carts and clipboards.

Maria Hill turns away from one of them and approaches him down the hallway.

“Captain Rogers,” she says. “Your friend is currently undergoing a procedure but they should be finished soon. Right this way sir.”

“You people don’t have to call me sir,” Steve says.

“Yessir,” Hill replies.

Steve follows her through a set of swinging doors to the observation room of a surgical theater. On the other side of the one-way glass two concentric circles of agents center on a figure strapped to a table, the first circle in white lab coats, the second circle in black body armor.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” Steve says darkly.

“I told you we can do better than keeping him contained sir,” Hill says. “We’ve had agents in situations like his before.”

“You don’t say.”

A circular device rings the head of the figure on the table and emits spinning blue lights, humming and pulsing. The figure twitches slightly as if in an unpleasant dream. Steve drifts closer to the glass and holds his hands planted on his hips, resisting the instincts of a lifetime spent reaching out to comfort him.

“But at the time,” Hill continues, “we didn’t have that.”

“What is it?” Steve says.

“A device we captured from the Centipede Project. We’ve made some modifications. It induces theta brain-wave frequencies to uncover memories buried in the subconscious.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“It’s all a bit technical, sir,” Hill says.

“Which memories?” Steve asks.

“We won’t know unless we ask him. What someone remembers and when is unpredictable. This just gives him the option.”

A chill climbs up Steve’s spine.

“Has he been talking?” Steve says.

“No sir. But he hasn’t been belligerent either, after some initial confusion.”

The lights stop spinning. The inner circle of white coats shift the table and undo the straps across the figure’s chest. The outer circle of black body armor raises pistols.

“No one was badly hurt,” Hill says. “He goes along.”

Bucky sits up slowly, and the white coats back away quickly. Bucky swings his legs over the edge of the table, facing the observation window. His head hangs and he takes labored breaths, bracing his left hand on the edge of the table. His right is bound and strapped, properly for where Steve broke it. 

Steve’s face is so close to the glass he can feel the cold around it.

“They’re moving him back to his room,” Hill says. “You should be able to talk to him.”

Bucky raises his head and looks up at the glass. Beyond simple exhaustion the expression on his face is almost unreadable but Steve wouldn't bet he could read that language on him anymore. Bucky can’t possibly see Steve on the other side but his eyes search in the reflection, he looks for so long that Steve thinks he must know, he must be waiting. When through chance his eyes meet the location of Steve’s and pause, Steve winces and steps back from the glass.

“That won’t be necessary,” Steve says.

Steve turns and leaves through the swinging doors. Now he’s shoving his hands in his pockets so that Maria Hill won’t see that they’re shaking. Bucky might remember. _Might_ remember. But he might not and the only way to know is ask and Steve _might_ hear him say no, he doesn’t remember _them_ , all he remembers is violence. It took so much to try once and to try again, here… 

Steve hears, or imagines that he can hear, the whir and click of machinery. He faces Maria Hill in the hallway, to talk rather than think.

“You’ll forgive my skepticism agent Hill,” Steve says. “But I put a lot of work into making sure this organization stopped operating.”

“Understood sir,” Hill says. “You’ll forgive my candor but this was bigger than you. There’s still a lot of good that SHIELD can do.”

“You expect me to believe you’re helping him out of the goodness of your heart?”

“We’re helping him because Hydra was our fault sir. We didn’t stop this from happening to him and we never knew.”

Hill clears her throat, and deliberately looks away from Steve.

“We also believe he may have valuable intel,” she says.

Steve spins on his heel and heads back to the elevator, stomping on rage.

“I’ll see myself out,” he says.

“Of course sir,” Hill replies.

The driver is still standing in the elevator. When it reaches the warehouse at the top again, the doors open on Clint Barton, scratching his head and waiting with a nearly identical driver. Steve lets confusion replace anger.

“You here to check on your work?” Steve says.

Clint shrugs. 

“Checking up on him,” Clint says. “Natasha didn’t have to sell me very hard on this job. They tell me the bad guys hypnotized him and made him fight his best friend.”

Clint smiles, a little sadly.

“How many people can say they know what that’s like?” Clint says.

Steve’s mouth opens, and he closes it again. Was that what Natasha had been thinking, calling Clint? He owes her an apology too. She is better at people than he gives her credit for. Not always to their detriment.

“Thank you,” Steve says.

“Don’t mention it. No, really, don’t mention it. Nat would kill me if she knew I was here.”

Steve nods. Maybe. Maybe not.

“Yeah I’m gonna be in the doghouse with Sam for a while,” Steve says.

He holds out his hand, and Clint shakes it. They trade places for the elevator and Steve’s driver moves off to start the car.

“If he talks to you…” Steve says, before the elevator doors close, “Let me know?”

“You got it Cap,” Clint says.

The sun sets on the drive back into the city. The driver doesn’t ask for payment. 

When Steve walks in Natasha is strapping on her weaponry in the living room. Captain America’s suit and shield are stacked on her table. Steve is moving automatically before she starts speaking. 

“I found us a lead on a Hydra stronghold,” she says, “somewhere they’re still manufacturing weapons. Stark is suiting up and has a plane waiting. We'll pick up Barton and Wilson, and Banner is meeting us on site.”

Steve empties his pockets into a drawer in Natasha’s kitchen, Bucky’s ring clinking down with the change. Here is something to do. Here is a way to get out of the city. Here is an excuse, no, a reason, a reason why he can’t go back to the facility in New Jersey and ask questions and hear answers. The problem of where he’s staying solved for the length of a mission. Sam’s frustration with him set aside for the length of a mission. He scoops up the stack from Natasha’s table with something approaching relief.

“Understood,” Steve says, and leads her out the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Conflict with Tony (beyond him just being a dick) is completely irrelevant to this story. So I will be flat out ignoring the fact that the Winter Soldier killed Tony’s parents.
> 
> Carry on.

“Lady and gentlemen we have reached cruising altitude,” Tony Stark calls over his shoulder from the pilot’s chair. “Today we will be reaching speeds of ‘fast’ on our way to the Godforsaken jungle.”

“Thanks Tony,” Steve mutters.

The assembled stand and converge on the center of the plane. Banner takes his glasses off and cleans them on his shirt, again, glancing across the armed and armored people surrounding him. His discomfort is understandable. He doesn’t want to _have_ to be the big guy. The frustrated silence from Sam and unspoken conversations with Natasha and Clint simply hang.

“Jarvis?” Natasha says. “Would you please pull up the data I sent you?”

“Certainly miss Romanov,” the plane answers.

A holographic display lights in front of them, a mottled field of green in shades of unreadability. Jarvis’ readout displays more useful information, coordinates indicating a location deeper into Argentina.

“We had a hard time getting sat photos,” Natasha says, and points into the display. “These are low buildings sheltered by the canopy.”

“Smart,” Clint says.

Steve holds eye contact with Clint for a moment. He lets a question touch his eyebrows. Clint shakes his head. Steve nods.

_Did he talk to you?_

_No._

_Alright._

“They’re using the river to transport their merchandise?” Steve asks.

“Most likely,” Natasha says.

Tony swipes and drags at the display, and Jarvis helpfully highlights a clear space away from the jungle.

“We’ll have to land out here,” Tony says. “You ready for aerial recon, Birdman?”

“Born ready,” Sam says.

Banner puts his glasses on and circles the image. Sam steps aside and finds himself standing shoulder to shoulder with Steve. He moves away. Almost casually.

“We don’t know what kind of technology they’re working with down there,” Natasha says. “Hydra has used energy weapons before.”

“I’ll pull up the radiation scanning programs,” Banner says quickly, and takes a computer terminal with visible relief.

Steve tries to pull Sam’s eyes, but Sam steadfastly refuses to look at him. Steve gives up. Sam will be a professional on the ground. That’s enough.

“Clint, Natasha, we know how this goes,” Steve says. “Circle in on the ground, take out any guards, keep in contact on coms.”

“Aye Captain,” Clint says. Natasha gives him a curt nod.

Tony loudly clears his throat.

“Is it just me or did Cap bring some of that ice on here with him?” Tony says. He hugs his shoulders and shivers. “Chilly.”

He’s right. The circle around the display freezes for an instant. Steve straightens and holds his gaze on Tony. Tony smirks. Steve tightens his grip on the straps of the shield.

“Eyes front everybody,” Steve says.

Tony shrugs.

“Jarvis, start running preflight checks on the suit,” Tony says.

“As you say sir,” Jarvis says.

The ice breaks. The assembled scatter to their own gear, the packing of parachutes and arrangement of arrowheads. Steve studies the display. He is his gear.

The plane lands and Sam and Tony take off. On the ground, dripping foliage shrouds grumbling factories. The zip and zing of Tony’s repulsors lead Steve forward, and he leads the others. 

Natasha follows Steve’s orders around the perimeter and doesn’t argue with him. Clint is invisible, evidenced only by the guards falling to arrows, and Steve trusts him in the shadows. Sam appears overhead when Steve is pinned in a tight corner and yanks Hydra’s guard off his feet. The team works, smoothly, regardless.

They know quickly that this battle won’t be going down in the history books. There are more factory workers than technicians, more technicians than soldiers. Avoiding killing the unarmed is more difficult than killing the armed. The Avengers leave the arrests to the authorities. Banner gets to stay on the plane relaying information. 

When the shooting stops and the people have been cleared out Steve only wants to call Banner to destroy the buildings. But that isn’t necessary. He starts it himself. Steve bangs the shield and his boots through Hydra’s production line unaware of the smile on his face. Wrecked equipment collapses around him with the sound of screaming steel and he closes his lips over his teeth. Tony takes the walls down with his missiles and it doesn’t feel like wasted effort to Steve.

This facility was in contact with others. Jarvis takes notes. This destruction points them toward other destruction to be carried out in the future. Steve relaxes in the familiar pattern. On the plane heading home, he nearly falls asleep.

And when they return to the city Steve gathers the contents of his pockets from Natasha’s kitchen drawer and his shirts from her couch and takes them away. He leaves the spare key on her counter. He clears the broken pieces of his coffee table out of his living room and sweeps his floor. When he sleeps, it’s soundly. The next day, he calls Maria Hill’s car service.


	10. Chapter 10

Maria Hill leads Steve down a side passage of the underground facility, through a set of blast proof doors, and the white tile falls away to bare concrete. Control rooms are studded in the walls, lined with computers and armed agents. Plenty of security even for the Winter Soldier. If their weapons can incapacitate him, then it’s probably enough. The hall isn’t truly cold but gooseflesh rises on Steve’s arms.

Hill opens a second set of doors at the end of the hall to a harshly lit room bisected by a wall of clear plexiglass and steel. On the other side Bucky sits cross legged on a folding cot with his head tilted back on the wall, face up to the ceiling and eyes closed. 

“You’ve got ten minutes, sir,” Hill says. “We have a schedule.”

“Thank you agent Hill.”

Bucky doesn’t move when the doors boom closed behind her. Steve stands in the middle of his half, pulls his spine up straight, and clears his throat.

“Bucky?”

They’ve given him blue scrubs to wear. He looks ridiculous. But he’s washed his hair at least, and tied it back out of his face.

“Can you hear me?”

Bucky tips his head down and opens his eyes. He scans across Steve’s face, tiny movements of his eyes focusing and refocusing, and he nods slowly.

“You know who I am?”

He nods again. The straps are gone from his right arm. Maybe he heals like Steve does, if the work was done right and the break wasn’t too bad…

“They treating you okay?”

Bucky looks up into the welded corners of the holding room, across the width of the plexiglass barrier, and tilts his head to look past Steve at the blast proof door. There’s nothing else in the room but the two of them and the cot he’s sitting on.

“Food’s alright,” he says.

“Point taken,” Steve says.

Bucky straightens from the wall and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He folds his hands on his crossed ankles and Steve can’t help but stare at the steel interlaced with flesh and wonder if it hurts him to do it.

“What were you doing in my apartment?” Steve asks.

“Looking for you.”

“While I wasn’t there?”

“I was looking for… who you are. I didn’t know… I thought you were a glitch. Old memories… came up sometimes.”

Bucky speaks slowly and deliberately, choosing and delivering words with care like each one is fragile. They both watch the small unthinking movements of his fingers wringing together. The buzzing is the only sound because Steve can’t respond, seeing Bucky moving through his home confused and searching for him.

_“What do you remember?”_

Such a very complicated simple question.

He seems to have enough control over the machinery to move delicately. Steve supposes that’s something he must have learned over time. Didn’t have much choice.

Bucky takes a deep breath and his hands stop.

“That night in your apartment…” he starts.

“We don’t need to talk about that,” Steve interrupts.

“Can I apologize?”

“If you feel like you have to.”

Bucky splits his hands and sighs heavily. He shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut, grimaces and opens his eyes again. Steve thinks it looks like passing dizziness. But it’s just a guess. God knows what the inside of his head looks like.

Bucky hauls his eyes back to Steve, and raises his left hand, and spins it in little circles in the air.

“Y'know at the movies… when the reel slipped, and the pictures went by all… sideways and chopped up… ?”

Steve’s mouth goes dry.

“Yeah?”

“It’s like that.”

Steve licks his lips. It doesn’t do much good.

“Still?”

“Less now.”

“Good.”

Bucky unfolds his legs and stands off the cot. He steps up to the barrier and Steve takes a step back. The plexiglass must be four inches thick but if it weren’t there Bucky would be close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough that Steve can see red rimming his eyes.

“I know what they’re trying to do,” Bucky says. “Making me remember.”

“They’re trying to help.”

Bucky holds up his right hand and drags one finger down the barrier. 

“Would you want to remember all of your nightmares?”

Steve stiffens. He resists the urge to take another step back from Bucky’s hand. It’s not just that he knows Bucky couldn’t break through. There is an argument going on in his nervous system between reasonable knowledge and experiential wariness in Bucky’s proximity playing out in his hammering heartbeat. 

“I am sorry,” Bucky says quietly.

When his hand falls to his side and he looks to Steve again, crestfallen and slumped under the weight of everything… He doesn’t look like a mystery. Steve can read it.

“Doesn’t make a difference does it?” Bucky says.

Steve wins the argument with his heartbeat and bullies his feet into a step forward. And another. He raises a hand and draws a wavering line down his side of the plexiglass.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “I feel like sorry always makes some difference.”

Bucky nods. He has forced so much feeling out of his face by practice or programming to show so little but something, just at the clarity of his eyes, makes Steve think it could be hope.

_“What do you remember?”_

“What do you remember?” Steve says.

Bucky shrugs.

“Ask. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Your name?”

“Bucky,” he answers immediately. “James Buchanan Barnes. Don’t think I can give you rank and serial number.”

“Sergeant. And I don’t think you’ll need your serial number.”

“Thank God.”

Steve searches back through his own memories and shies away from the pointed questions. Do you remember the first time we kissed? No. He strikes out at random.

“How about your sister’s graduation?”

Bucky’s eyebrows raise and he looks away up over Steve’s head.

“You mean the ceremony or the night after?”

“What do you think?”

“Probably… the part where she begged her big brothers to take her out to get her first drink. And then begged us to take her home when she got sick.”

His speaking has accelerated and eased. Steve feels a smile start at his eyes and try to move in on his lips. Bucky told the story right. Even that Becca always called them both her brothers. 

“That’d be it.”

“Good. I don’t remember a thing about the ceremony.”

“Not much to remember.”

“Becca had no right to look that grown up.”

“You’re not kidding.”

Bucky closes his eyes and groans softly, and presses his left hand against the barrier to hold stable. Steve flinches. The machinery is level with his face, modeled in intricate detail. Bucky covers his eyes with his other hand, rubbing across his brow.

“You alright?” Steve asks.

“That’s a dumb question. Ask something else.”

“Alright…”

Steve follows connections to other questions. Do you remember when Becca asked if she could sleep over with us and we didn’t quite know how to tell her no because we had other plans? No. Steve chooses other connections.

“You remember that drinking game Dernier taught us in Paris?”

“No.”

Steve nods. Hill did tell him, what Bucky would remember was unpredictable. Steve couldn’t expect everything.

But Bucky raises his head, and draws the mechanical hand back from the plexiglass, and his lips crook up on one side.

“That night is a little fuzzy. I don’t remember the rules. But I remember it about got us all brought up on charges.”

And just like that Steve can imagine smiling again.

“Well you shouldn't have been yelling so loud.”

“I don’t think we should’ve been playing that game with moonshine.”

“Speak for yourself. I was fine.”

“Hilarious.”

Steve feels the edge of a cliff under his feet, and toes forward. Do you remember that night we spent under the pier out of a hurricane playing tic-tac-toe with your pocketknife on the boards just to take the excuse we both wanted to be away from our parents for a whole night together? No, not that, not yet. But… Paris… 

“Do you remember that hotel… ? With the lemon trees out back… ?”

Bucky narrows his eyes. His face looks honestly blank. And the rest of Steve’s questions die in his throat.

“Don’t worry about it. If it comes back to you, you’ll know it.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Where are we?”

Steve pauses. But he’s not committed to keeping SHIELD secrets. And what the hell would Bucky do with the knowledge anyway?

“New Jersey.”

Bucky sucks air through his teeth. “Ah. I thought I smelled something.”

Steve hears an exhaled breath that sounds like a laugh, and realizes it was his own.

“Hilarious.”

Muffled clanging comes from the other side of the door. Steve wasn’t keeping time but SHIELD was. He hooks his thumb over his shoulder.

“They’re going to ask me to leave,” he says.

“Are you coming back?”

It ought to be an easy question for Steve to answer. It is, but for an instant of gnawing doubt that makes him pause. He’d fooled himself once, and fooled himself twice, chasing after Bucky since D.C. Time after time gotten his ass handed to him, but… 

There’s no mistaking the seeking expression on Bucky’s face. He wants Steve to say yes.

Steve can be ready to fight if he has to. But _Bucky_ wants him to say yes. Even if he only remembers half of anything that leaves a lot that is still him.

“Yeah,” Steve says.

“Good. I am bored out of my mind.”

Then Steve does smile.

“I'll bet. I’ll see what I can do about that.”

“Thanks.”

The door behind Steve opens. Bucky smooths his face over into vacancy. He stands with the photograph stillness Steve noticed in his apartment, seeming to vanish even in the light, and Steve’s smile vanishes with him. He backs away from the barrier, trying to remember if he had ever seen Bucky do that before, if it was something he’d learned in the war or something forced into him later.

Hill enters with a small team, looking highly unnecessary to Steve. But their rifles are slung over their backs and their pistols are holstered now. 

“Sir?” Agent Hill says. “We’ll be taking him back down to medical.”

She takes in their stances and absorbs information quickly. She drops some of the brusqueness and inclines her head to Steve.

“You can walk along, if you like.”

“I’ll do that.”

Agents key in codes and pull back bolts and a door in the barrier swings open. Bucky holds his arms out and the agents snap heavy blinking restraints around his wrists. Blue light shimmers up his arms and the machinery twitches briefly. Steve finds himself cringing in sympathy.

Bucky walks through the door and there’s nothing but air between them. Air, half a dozen guards, and about seventy years. Bucky leaves space for it, and doesn’t approach him. Steve hates his own relief in that.

Steve walks alongside him back down the hallway hating it, and interrogating himself for not wanting to reach for him, not even trying to touch him. But when he looks at him the stillness is unnerving and Steve isn’t sure, if he tried to touch him, what if anything he could even feel under his hand.

The agents pilot them into the surgical bay, and Steve can hear the memory machine beginning to hum. He stops outside the swinging doors and watches Bucky through, not knowing what he is so surely waiting for, until Bucky turns his head over his shoulder to look back at him. Then he knows, and regrets that he didn’t reach for him. Steve forces what he can of a smile and a nod. Bucky doesn’t react. But Steve said he was coming back. Bucky heard him. The doors swing shut behind him.

“You got him talking,” Hill says.

“You’re welcome,” Steve grumbles. Of course they had been listening in.

“Captain if there’s anything he can tell us about Hydra’s operations you would be the first to want to know.”

She’s right. But Steve doesn’t have to be happy about it.

“Ask him. You do more than ask, I promise you I’ll know about that.”

“Yessir.”

“And get the man a magazine or something. If you let him get too bored he’s gonna take this place apart just for something to do.”

“Yessir.”

“I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

“We’re counting on it, sir.”

The sound of the memory machine rises to a high pitched whine. Steve turns back to the elevator.

The driver today is the same driver that brought him before, anonymized by sunglasses but Steve recognizes him. Steve lets him open the door of the car. It’s his job.

The miles roll by outside the window. Steve’s eyes glaze over, lost in the quiet.

It had taken a week in a medical tent to get Bucky back up on his feet in Azzano, after Steve pulled him out of Zola’s facility. It took the whole week before Bucky stopped looking at Steve, newly changed by the serum, like he’d grown a second head and could stand to touch him. The confusion faded from Bucky’s face slowly but eventually, when he looked at Steve, he recognized him.

And it wasn’t long before they found themselves gazing and breathing heavy and searching for an exit and an excuse. Some new and some strange and some damaged but still wanting.

Steve’s hand moves unconsciously to the packet of cigarettes in his pocket. When the lighter flicks he stops.

“Do you mind?” Steve says to the driver, and waves the cigarette.

“No sir,” the driver says. The window rolls down. Steve lights the cigarette and takes a deep drag.

It had taken a month after Steve joined the war before he got the chance to get Bucky alone, a day between missions and a hotel outside Paris mostly empty and grateful for any patronage. The lady in the kitchen cut up lemons from the trees out back for the tea she set out in the room as if either of them was there for the tea.

When the door closed they slipped their rings off of their dog tags. Bucky put his on. Steve’s lodged on his second knuckle. He tried to play off the disappointment that it didn’t fit anymore. Bucky took the ring back and said it was fine, said they’d get new ones when they got out of the shit they were in.

And it was different, but it was kind of nice being Bucky’s height. Steve didn’t have to crane his neck to kiss him. Though he did have to reach farther down to touch him. The habits of time needed some adjustments. Steve made them happily, to fall into bed with Bucky and take him without thinking of hurting him because Steve wouldn’t. His new body remembered how not to and making Bucky cry out was just sweet, so sweet.

The man behind the desk at the hotel recognized them when they came back together. To the best of Steve’s knowledge, he never told anyone who mattered.

Steve ashes his cigarette out the window.

“What's your name?” Steve asks the driver.

“Cavanaugh, sir,” he says.

“Well, Cavanaugh, it appears we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. You don't take orders from me so you can stop calling me sir.”

“I could sir,” Cavanaugh says, “but Mister Rogers is someone else to most people.”

Steve chuckles. “So I've heard. I can only hope to be such a good man. Captain will be fine.”

“Alright Captain.”

“Were you with SHIELD in D.C.?”

“Yessir. Sorry. Captain. Yeah, I was in the Triskelion. Took bullets from people I thought were friends. It’s how I got this cushy assignment.”

He sounds younger than Steve had guessed from appearances. Younger than Steve had been when he walked in to Erskine’s lab. And already on the front lines.

“God willing you get to keep it,” Steve says.

“There were more of us than you know who still wanted to fight the good fight. The new director is on the level. If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s an honor to be at your service.”

Steve sighs.

“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you Cavanaugh.”

“You too Captain.”

They make the rest of the drive in a less brittle silence. When Cavanaugh lets Steve out at his apartment he jokes that he’ll get an ashtray for the car. Steve lets Cavanaugh see him smile.

In his apartment, Steve calls Sam. Sam doesn't answer. Steve leaves a message at the tone.

“Sam… I'm sorry I didn't tell you he was in the city. The last time you went up against him… I just didn't want to see that happen again. But I should've told you. I know you've always got my back.”

Steve hangs up. And goes out to buy a new coffee table.


	11. Chapter 11

Steve drops the flat pack of a coffee table on his floor, and glances at his phone while he’s searching his toolbox for a screwdriver. Natasha told him, when she insisted he get a cellphone, that he would get used to it. And it had become the center of a series of habits he hadn’t expected. Constant communication.

Sam sent him a text message. Steve still hasn’t figured out when those are more appropriate than a phone call.

“Come down to The Corner. You’re buying.”

Maybe if that’s all he has to say.

But it makes Steve hesitantly optimistic. He leaves the screwdriver on the box on the floor.

Someone named the bar at the corner of Steve's street "The Corner" because they thought they were clever. It's a dingy cash-only bar but it's close by, and on a weekday before the sun goes down frequently empty. The bartender looks up from her own cellphone when Steve walks through the door and bobs her head, takes two pint glasses off the shelf and starts pulling beers.

“Your friend is already here,” she says.

“Figured,” Steve says.

They had been through often enough, sharing drinks or sharing silence, whichever was required, that the bartender doesn't react to Captain America and Falcon any more than she does to any other patrons who always order the same thing and can be relied on to tip well. It’s a comfortable hole to hide in. Somewhere they can talk where no one is listening.

Steve digs in his pocket to pay. He pulls out a handful of change, slides Bucky’s ring onto his finger to get it out of the way, and dumps the change in the tip glass. He leaves a twenty on the bar and takes the pints and finds Sam in the back corner booth. 

Sam eyes him as he approaches and sets the beers on the table. Steve sits and braces himself. Then Sam shakes his head and lifts his glass.

“You’re an idiot," Sam says.

“I know," Steve replies.

Sam’s eyes warm over a bit. He’s earned the right to pick at Steve, when Steve deserves it. And Steve is glad he’s taking it. He hopes the tossing of the insults and the drinking of the beers will start the settling of the atmosphere.

"Alright, so fill me in,” Sam says. “He’s with our friends from D.C.?"

It won’t come without the telling of the truth, Steve thinks, unless he is resigned to having Sam as nothing more than a professional on missions. He isn’t. They will speak in vagaries in public but he will not lie.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “They’re still in business. Heard one of them say they’ve got a new director. I don’t know much more than that. They’re hoping he has information, for them and for us.”

“Does he?”

“Don’t know yet. They’re working on him.”

“You should loop Nat in, see if he can help her with locations.”

He will not lie, or fail to mention the truth, even if it will piss Sam off.

“She knows,” Steve says. “I called her when he showed up.”

“You called her and not me?”

“I…”

“The hell, Steve?”

Steve exhales hard, and reminds himself that Sam has the right, and doesn’t rise to an argument.

“I’m sorry for that. I am.”

“Right.”

“I didn’t want to have to call anybody. I just wanted to talk to him but when that didn’t work… I didn’t want to see either of you go up against him again. But between you and Nat…”

Steve stops himself before he says that he cares about Sam’s safety more than Natasha’s. He doesn’t like the way that conversation would turn out.

“... she had contacts you don’t have,” Steve says. At least that’s also the truth. “Without her I couldn’t have gotten him secured.”

Sam looks like he’s biting down on an argument too, but he lets it go. All Sam could’ve done was fight. Natasha is the spy.

“He is, though?” Sam says. “Secure?”

“Yes. Buried under New Jersey. I don’t think even he could get out.”

Sam nods slowly. He sets his beer down and crosses his arms on the table.

“You’ve seen him?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he know you?”

“Some.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

Steve scoffs. Sam smirks.

“Hey, this is kinda my job, Steve.”

And Steve is too baffled by his friend to form a good response for a moment. He was wrong. There is more that Sam can do than fight, and he’s doing it. Trying not to be angry and trying to be present, for Steve, and he would’ve done it from moment one if Steve let him. Steve feels even more the idiot.

“No,” Steve says. “Not really. Thank you. I think I have to sort this one out on my own.”

“Alright. If you change your mind.”

Sam holds silence for a moment. He won’t press but he’ll leave the door open. And Steve doesn’t particularly want to talk about what Bucky knows of him, or about seeing him caged, or about what Steve is terrified that Bucky doesn’t remember. But before it comes as a surprise to Sam, while Steve is being honest… 

“There is something I ought to tell you,” Steve says.

Sam sits back with an expression that says that was what he was expecting to hear. Steve drums his fingers on the sides of his glass.

“He wasn’t just a friend, Sam. We were together for years. Since we were teenagers. A few people knew, back home, a couple of friends who were… like us, but, since I came back I haven’t told anybody. Didn’t seem to matter. But I should’ve told you, right from the start.”

“Yeah you should’ve. But I kinda pieced that together.”

Steve looks up, surprised. Sam chuckles.

“Come on, man. I can see your face when you talk about him.”

“That obvious?”

“Only to someone with two working eyes.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“You’re not subtle, Steve.”

“So I didn’t even have to tell you.”

“Well, I’m glad you can finally say it out loud.”

Steve nods. Whether Sam knew or he didn’t, it probably wouldn’t have changed what went down in D.C., or changed their relationship after, or made Sam any more understanding of Steve still going after the man he only knew as the Winter Soldier. But Sam deserved his honesty regardless.

“You know he had nothing to do with you and me,” Steve says.

“No, I know. That was between us.”

“Good.”

The bartender turns on the television and tunes it to a baseball game. They pretend to watch it, and finish their beers. Steve can hope they’re back to baseline, a confident if complicated friendship. But he knows they won’t be ordering another round.

“I still owe you an appearance with the shield,” Steve says.

“You owe it to the people who show up every week,” Sam says. “But whatever gets you through the door.”

“You’re right.”

A small group enters the bar, chatting and laughing, a couple of couples just getting their evenings started. Sam and Steve meet eyes over their empty glasses and they take the cue to leave. The bartender waves them out, spending most of her attention on the new paying customers and keeping their backs to the door.

The streetlights have come on over the sidewalk and the block is a patchwork of light and shadow around and between them. Neon from the sign above the bar colors their patch a bright red.

“You’re going to keep me posted,” Sam says.

“I am,” Steve says. “Anything changes I’ll let you know.”

“You’d better mean that. There’s not much more you can buy with hot dogs and beer.”

Steve drops his head, chagrined.

“I don’t aim to find out. Thank you. Thanks for calling me down here.”

“Yeah, well,” Sam says. “Thought maybe you’d learned your lesson.”

“I keep trying to.”

Sam puts his hands in his pockets. Steve looks up the block and sees his car under the next streetlight in the opposite direction of Steve’s apartment. In the second before one or both of them picks a direction to turn away from the bar, Steve tenses. They hadn’t been easy with each other today, not like other times leaving this place. Steve tenses out of habit, as he has since the one time Sam turned with him and asked, with much more warmth in his eyes, to come up to his apartment. And Steve said no.

“I’ll see you,” Sam says, and turns toward his car.

“See you,” Steve says.

They leave the patch of neon. Back to baseline. Steve goes up to his apartment alone. He spends longer than he otherwise might need to building a coffee table.

When he wakes up the next morning it’s to glaring sunlight through a window so clear he imagines it must be an empty frame. He gets up and closes the curtain, but he’s already awake. He showers and dresses, and steps out onto his balcony, shaking a cigarette out of the pack. He lifts it to light it, and stalls with his hand in front of his face.

Bucky’s ring shines on the third finger of his left hand. For a terrible moment he can’t remember putting it on, how long he has been wearing it, whether or not he has ever taken it off. Then remembers how he’d done it, without ceremony, in the bar, so he wouldn’t drop it in the tip glass with his change. How easy it was to wear and how easy to forget.

He lights the cigarette. He’ll remember to take it off before he goes back to see Bucky again. Or if he gets called in to a meeting or a mission. He’ll remember to take it off if he goes down to the gym, obviously, before he starts in on a bag he’ll take it off. He’ll remember.

Just… Not right now.


	12. Chapter 12

It occurs to Steve as he contemplates breakfast by himself that he still owes something to Natasha for the days spent occupying her couch. She said that he didn’t, but Tony had a point on the plane. Steve made an effort to square things with Sam. He decides that he can at least send Natasha flowers and hope it warms over more of the chill.

Phonebook. Credit card. Sunflowers? Thanks. 

Natasha’s idea about Clint had been a good one too, if indeed she had been thinking of what Loki did to him before the battle of New York and pointed him at Bucky.

Steve addresses his own coffee and toast. If Steve introduces them Bucky may well be willing to talk to Clint, and the prospect of that is attractive. He dials Clint’s number, hoping he’s still in the city.

"Barton," Clint answers.

"Clint," Steve says, "how would you like to take another trip out to New Jersey?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

“Can you make it out today?”

"Can and will. On my way," Clint says, and hangs up.

Steve finishes his toast and summons Cavanaugh. He takes off Bucky’s ring, and spins it in his fingers. It’s better if Bucky talks to Clint, Steve tells himself. Clint won’t balk at anything Bucky says about Hydra. He’s probably heard worse, maybe even from Natasha.

Clint can make conversation and won’t make it an interrogation, Steve tells himself. And Steve didn’t even have to ask him to show up. Clint has Opinions about mind control.

Steve sets Bucky’s ring on his table. Bucky has to talk to someone. It doesn't have to be someone with too much skin in the game, Steve tells himself.

Cavanaugh greets Steve cheerfully and points out the ashtray he’s added to the car. Steve left his cigarettes. He thanks Cavanaugh anyway. Cavanaugh chatters on the drive, and Steve hums and nods. He hasn’t been paying attention to this year’s baseball season. But there’s no reason to be rude.

When they arrive at the warehouse Clint stands outside leaning against another car in animated conversation with his driver. He bounces off of the door when Steve steps out and puts his finger to his lips, hushing the driver and grinning.

Steve doesn’t ask. There’s something loose and flexible about Clint in any circumstance. Maybe it’s the difference between a bow and a gun. And Steve is grateful someone is having a good time. The agents form up to lead them inside.

“I don’t know how high you’re setting your hopes but he didn’t even look at me last time,” Clint says.

“He talked to me,” Steve says. “I think he still trusts me.”

“So we’re gonna reminisce about old times?”

Steve’s stomach clenches.

“I won’t. You can. Like you said, you understand what he went through, in a way. Anything he’ll share about past missions we might be able to use.”

“Uh huh…” Clint mumbles.

He looks at Steve sideways and suspicious. Steve ignores it.

The elevator opens and the underground facility shows a distinct lack of Maria Hill. Agents move purposefully in her absence, the structure large enough that her supervision is not required.

“I woke up here once,” Clint says. “Caught some new incendiary round in the Dominican Republic.”

“You don’t say.”

“Nurses were cuter then. I think. I was on some pretty strong stuff.”

Steve remembers the way to Bucky’s cell, and he and Clint are nodded through, without Hill. He makes note of it.

“Of course it might have been in Kansas,” Clint says. “These places all look the same after a while.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Steve stops Clint in the control room and faces the agents guarding the door to Bucky’s cell.

“Alright, we’ll do it like this. Clint, hold back and let me go in and talk to him first, get him comfortable. Then you follow me and I’ll see if I can get him talking to you. Agents, open the door and call me out a minute after that. Make something up. Clint you can talk to him about whatever you want.”

“Yessir,” the agents reply, and set about the locks on the door.

Clint rocks back on his heels, and purses his lips.

“Now, I know that's what I would've done," he says, “but where did _you_ learn that manipulative garbage?”

“War,” Steve says, and walks through the door. The agents pull it closed behind him.

A small table and two chairs have been added to the room on the near side of the plexiglass. The chairs are askew and there are rings of condensation on the table as if someone spent some time here. Bucky’s side has gained nothing but an electronic tablet, in his hands, which he looks up from when Steve walks into the room. His eyes focus and brighten.

“Back so soon,” he says.

“I guess we were both bored,” Steve lies.

Bucky tips the tablet in Steve’s direction.

“They did give me this,” he says. “Better than a library card.”

“What’re you reading?”

“I’m not. Just looking at everything that’s out there.”

He turns the tablet around so Steve can see it.

“ _Les Misérables_ in the original French?” he says sarcastically.

Steve smiles tight. It’s painful how much that sounds like him.

“That’ll keep you busy.”

“In between visits.”

Bucky’s gaze turns sly. Warmth rises on Steve’s cheeks. He curses it. He doesn’t know and he can’t ask and Bucky doesn’t have anything to lose, fucking around.

“They’re trying out friendly,” Bucky says, and waves at the table and chairs, “but you know that’s bullshit.”

Visits. Of course. Visits from SHIELD not visits from Steve. He’s not sly, just sarcastic. Steve waits to feel relieved by that. He doesn’t.

“Better than the alternative,” Steve says.

“They’re embarrassing themselves. Sent in a couple of kids ready to wet themselves if I so much as scratch my ass.”

The pain twists. Bucky’s sardonic tone lines up perfectly with Steve’s memory. But there’s no denying the alterations. And the fear that surrounds him.

Bucky drops the tablet on the cot and stands. He wavers slightly on his feet, then stabilizes. He sounds better than yesterday and Steve thinks he looks better than yesterday too. Must have been exposure to the memory machine, or gaining entertainment, conversation with whoever had been sitting at the table. Some combination of those. Steve refuses the thought that it was talking to him that stabilized Bucky.

Bucky tugs at the front of his scrubs.

"Not to seem ungrateful but you think you could get real clothes out of them next? There's fuck all I could do with a belt that I can't do with this," he says, raising his left hand and flexing the steel fingers.

Steve’s mind replays some examples of what Bucky can do before he can stop it. He suppresses a shudder.

"I'll ask…"

The door behind Steve opens again for Clint. Bucky lowers his hand slowly and Steve can see him start to still. But Clint moves easily into the room and keeps his casual demeanor and it seems catching. Bucky eyes him, but his suspicion is mostly curiosity, and he remains without vanishing.

“Friend of yours?” Bucky asks Steve.

Steve waggles a hand in the air.

“Co-worker?” Steve says.

Clint clutches his chest theatrically.

“You wound me, Cap! After everything we’ve been through!”

Bucky arches an eyebrow. Steve relaxes tension he hadn’t realized he’d carried in with him.

“You could’ve opened with that last week," Bucky says to Clint.

“Would you have believed me?” Clint asks.

“No.”

“Would you have given a shit?”

“No.”

“Well?”

Bucky quirks half a smile.

“I like your friend," he says to Steve.

“Thought you might.”

“So all that shit about Loki was true?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “He only had me for a few days but I did a lot of damage. Then Romanov kicked my ass and brought me back to my senses.”

Bucky glances at Steve for confirmation. Steve nods.

“Hmm. Didn’t catch your name,” Bucky says.

“Clint Barton. Hawkeye, when I’m working.”

Bucky’s eyes widen.

“You were a pain in the ass in the Dominican Republic.”

“I did try to be. And it’s funny you should mention that.”

“You here for revenge?”

“Here? Of course not. We’re even. I already shot you. How do you think you got here?”

Bucky smiles, and nods, as one professional to another. Steve wonders if he could vanish the way that Bucky does to hide his disquiet. Neither of them seems bothered by any of it… 

The door opens and the agents spare him trying. One clears his throat nervously and points into the control room.

“Captain Rogers, sir? Agent Hill would like a word with you.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, a hair too quickly. “Talk amongst yourselves, gentlemen.”

He turns without seeing their reactions, and escapes. The door booms closed. Clint came in on his own to talk to Bucky, Steve tells himself. He’s not forcing Clint to do anything he didn’t want to do.

“Does Hill actually want to talk to me?” Steve asks the nervous agent.

“No sir. She’s overseeing another project sir. You said to make something up…”

“Yes, thank you. Good job.”

A computer screen in the control room shows video of the inside of Bucky’s cell. The agent sitting at it wears headphones and Steve can’t hear the conversation, but he sees Bucky’s mouth move and Clint tips his head back and laughs. The agent snickers quietly at whatever she heard. Whatever Bucky said.

“Are you recording that?” Steve asks.

“Yessir.”

Steve recalls his comment about the hotel in Paris.

“Understood.”

“You can listen in.”

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

Clint fires a comment at Bucky that earns him a laugh in return. Just seeing Bucky’s face open and his shoulders shake brings warmth back to Steve’s face. Hearing it would have burned him.

He paces the control room, watching and not watching and trying to avoid watching the video feed and guessing at what they’re talking about. He considers leaving without Clint but he can’t justify that to himself. Agents on guard and on duty shuffle out of his way.

Natasha, he knew, had a run in with the Winter Soldier. But Clint hadn’t said anything. Steve doesn’t want to ask what happened in the Dominican Republic. Doesn’t want to know. But he wants to ask why Clint didn’t tell him.

Then he runs that conversation out to its conclusion and decides he doesn’t really like the way it would go. Clint would not let Steve out of it clean.

After some time Steve has a hard time counting he sees Clint hold up a finger to stop Bucky mid sentence and pull his phone out of his pocket. He looks down at it and then up at the camera and waves his arm. Agents scurry to open the door.

“Hey Cap, duty calls,” Clint says. “Natasha and Jarvis pinpointed a Hydra communications center in Latvia.”

Bucky strafes across his cell, to look out into the control room, back and forth between Clint and Steve.

“You’re still after Hydra?” He raises his voice to be heard through the door.

“They keep cropping up,” Clint says.

“Steve? Are you heading out there?”

Steve glares at Clint.

“That’s the plan.”

Bucky asks a question, in a language Steve doesn’t understand. Clint responds.

“Clint?” Steve says. “We need to go. Sorry to run, Buck. We’ll be back around.”

Clint walks unhurried across the room. Bucky calls after him.

“Head’s up? The terrain around that base is pretty rough. Shouldn’t be a problem for your fliers but they’ll wanna watch out for the turrets.”

Steve steps past Clint and leans back into the room.

“What was that?”

Bucky shrugs.

“It was base of operations for a mission in the seventies. The entrances are dug down in the hill. Turrets covered the high ground. It was a good setup. I’d be surprised if they changed it.”

Steve catches Clint’s eyes. He nods imperceptibly.

“We’re getting you on coms,” Steve says. “You’re gonna walk us through.”

“Sure thing,” Bucky says. “I didn’t have plans this afternoon.”

“Call Tony,” Steve says.

“On it,” Clint says.

Steve squares up to the SHIELD agents. Doubtless they have a leadership structure in Hill's absence but if they're going to persist in calling him "sir" then it's one he will step into.

“Get him out of there," Steve says, "and set him up on one of your computers."

The agents hesitate only briefly. They consider the far door, strong enough to stop such explosions as only SHIELD can dream of, and their own weaponry, which has brought down the Winter Soldier at least once before. Steve can see the silent discussion come down on the side of assisting Captain America and the Avengers. They will be telling stories about this.

“Yessir," the agent nearest the door replies, and moves in to open the plexiglass.

"Thanks Stark," Clint says into his phone, and hands it to the agent in headphones. "Patch in to that frequency.”

She is past her hesitation. She heard the conversation Steve didn’t. She takes Clint’s phone and pulls up programs inexplicable to Steve.

Bucky walks into the control room with his hands unbound. Agents' hands drift to holsters. Bucky’s lips press into a hard line and he raises his hands above his shoulders.

“You want my help or don’t you?” Bucky says quietly.

The agent at the computer takes her headphones off and sets them down. She stands and spins the chair around for Bucky. He lowers his hands, and holds out his right.

“Bucky Barnes,” he says, to her and, Steve can tell, to the room at large.

“Um…”

She reaches out carefully and shakes.

“Valerie Martin.”

“Valerie. Thank you. Give me a hand getting the Avengers up on your satellites, would you?”

Bucky sits. Agent Martin bends down to her keyboard. Her colleagues return to their duties, or to alert parade rest, simply watching.

Steve shakes his head to clear bewilderment. How many times had Bucky tried to tell him, his whole life tried to tell him, you catch more flies with honey… And Bucky remembers how to do that.

Clint has taken his phone back and moved off to harry agents into letting them out. Steve starts to follow, then pauses, drawn back by something he knows he’s forgotten to do. He reaches out and lays his hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

“Talk to you soon,” Steve says.

Bucky tracks up Steve’s arm to his face, and gives Steve a soft smile. Steve isn’t sure what he expected to feel under his hand, but what he feels is warm and only as solid as flesh can be.

“You’ll hear from me,” Bucky says.

Steve squeezes once and pulls back his hand. He follows Clint and leaves Bucky talking jargon with agent Martin. She’ll get him online. And Steve will hear him in the field.

“I think now agent Hill is going to want to talk to you, sir,” says the nervous agent.

“She knows how to reach me.”

Steve joins Clint in the elevator, and it rumbles upwards.

“You did that on purpose,” Steve says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clint replies.


	13. Chapter 13

Tony’s plane roars to a landing in an empty lot down the row from the warehouse. Cavanaugh whistles, impressed. He’d practically jumped to chauffer both Steve and Clint, undoubtedly for a chance at glimpsing the other Avengers. Steve hadn’t the heart to tell him they could walk. Neither had Clint.

Natasha and Sam flank the plane’s lowering ramp, cover if they need it in an unknown sector. Cavanaugh straightens and brushes off the front of his shirt. Steve and Clint board the plane and Cavanaugh cranes his neck to see past them. Natasha waves at him. Steve is a little sorry that they’re all still in street clothes. Though it may add novelty to the story when Cavanaugh tells his friends. The whole world has seen the Avengers in uniform on the news.

"The flowers were lovely," Natasha says as the ramp rumbles closed.

"Better decoration than I was," Steve says, and tries on an apologetic smile.

"I don't know about that…”

Natasha returns his smile wryly. Steve takes the hint of suggestiveness to mean they’re back to baseline. If only it was always so easy.

“Banner?” Steve asks.

“Tied up in Hong Kong. Sends his best.”

Steve nods. God willing they won’t need the Hulk.

“Jarvis take us up,” Tony says.

“Yes sir,” the plane answers.

The assembled sit and strap in and the plane begins its ascent. Tony spins around in the pilot’s chair and points out a flashing red light on the console.

“I’ve got SHIELD holding on the line,” Tony says. “Say the word and we’ll have your informant patched in.”

“Informant?” Sam says.

“I didn’t have time to let anyone else know,” Steve answers. “He just started talking.”

“Who is this guy?” Tony says. “And why are we listening to him?”

Steve’s thoughts race ahead of what he actually wants to tell Tony. He edits them down to say, “It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long flight,” Tony says flippantly, and leans his chair back, crossing his hands behind his head.

Steve’s hands start to ball up and he has to consciously relax them. Tony is good at his job and needs information to do it. The fact that he makes Steve’s fists itch is beside the point.

“Just so we’re all on the same page. His name is Bucky Barnes.”

“What a coincidence,” Tony says.

“No… It isn’t,” Steve says.

He tells the abridged version of their story from Brooklyn to the train, leaving out only the bedroom details. Natasha and Clint supply confirmation from their own experiences, filling in the Winter Soldier. 

“Brainwashed?” Tony asks at one point.

“It’s possible,” Natasha says firmly.

Tony’s skepticism passes. He knows her story already.

Steve places Bucky in D.C. Tony feigns disinterest but Steve can see him filing the information away for future use. Steve knows that even without Bucky there he would’ve gone just as hard, finding out Hydra was living inside SHIELD. Steve knows that’s why he didn’t bother to tell anyone about Bucky when he got the Avengers involved. Tony might not see it that way.

“Huh,” Tony says when Steve’s telling reaches the present day. “Here we were thinking there was only one popsicle left in the freezer.”

“I thought so too,” Steve says.

“And we don’t think he’s just leading us on to get out early for good behavior? Faking that he’s got his memory back?”

Steve hesitates. No, Bucky remembered about Becca, and he remembered about the war… Some things about the war… He couldn’t have faked that. But just to be sure… 

“What do we know about the layout of this base?” Steve asks Natasha.

Jarvis anticipates her request and lights the plane’s holographic display, a rough outline of rocky forested terrain.

“Scans indicate the main facility is underground,” Natasha says. “Movement of equipment suggests subterranean entrances and exits.”

“That bit checks out,” Clint says.

“And there are anti-aircraft guns scattered through the area.”

“So does that,” Steve says. 

“He doesn’t have anything to gain by lying,” Clint says. “If his intel turns bad on us there’s nothing to stop SHIELD throwing him in a deep hole and filling it in.”

Steve winces. He remembers exactly what it felt like losing Bucky once and the reminder stings. 

Nothing to gain by lying. Unless he’s still theirs, under Hydra’s control, a good actor and patient sleeper. He could be leading them into a trap.

Steve can’t tell if he’s entertaining that possibility because it’s realistic or because it would put him back where he had been months ago, with the sure and certain knowledge that Bucky was gone and that chapter was closed. Instead of here and now, staring at pages laying open and a future unwritten.

If Bucky wanted him dead, he could’ve let the river do it.

“Alright,” Steve says. “Open the channel.”

The plane’s com system clicks. Steve says a quick silent prayer before he speaks that no one will hear the details he left out of his story in the tone of his voice. Decides he can’t call him “Bucky” if that’s going to work.

“Barnes? Do you read us?”

“Loud and clear,” Bucky’s voice sounds through the plane. “Who else am I talking to?”

“Stark, Wilson, Romanov.”

“Ah…” Bucky says.

There is an awkward pause and a rustle on the line, echoed by Sam and Natasha sharing a glance across the plane. This is the first time they’ve heard him speak. And he knows it.

“For the record, and whatever it’s worth,” Bucky says, “I’m not happy about D.C. either. Won’t happen again.”

Sam and Natasha blink at each other and at Steve in mild surprise. As apologies go it’s not much but more than they expected.

“Thanks, I guess,” Sam says.

And Steve’s silent prayer ends in thanks of his own. They didn’t have to see him again, deal with him as a physical threat, just a voice they could accept or ignore. Steve should’ve been so lucky.

“So I’ve got the location up on satellite,” Bucky says, “and you will all be happy to know it appears just how I remember it.”

“Jarvis, get us that imagery,” Tony says.

“Certainly sir,” the plane responds.

The holographic display shimmers and solidifies in greater clarity, the signal stolen from SHIELD, complete with their logo in the corner. As they watch points appear, labelled, Bucky’s input on the specifics. Hidden entrances and the routes to them, machine gun turrets and their effective ranges. Jarvis zooms closer on the image, and it moves, live video of patrols on rounds.

“Well that’s terrifying,” Sam mutters.

“That’s SHIELD,” Steve says.

“Barnes, what can you tell us?” Clint says.

“Their cover was an astronomy lab. See that bank of satellite dishes on the ridge?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah those aren’t telescopes. It’s a relay station. Signal boosting their communications all over Eurasia. The whole base exists to protect and operate those satellite dishes.”

“Sounds like a no brainer,” Clint says. “Take those down, disrupt Hydra’s communication.”

“You could do that,” Bucky says carefully. “It would disorient them for a bit. Or, and this is just a suggestion, you leave them up and listen in.”

“Can we do that?” Sam asks.

“Depends,” Tony says. “Jarvis might be able to intercept the signals. I’ll let you know when we’re in range.”

“If we leave their communications up, they’ll be able to alert each other that we’re coming,” Natasha says.

“You can bet they already know,” Bucky says. “But there aren’t any bases near enough that they could mobilize reinforcements before you can get out of there.”

“You know that for sure?” Steve says.

“Yes I do.”

The assembled have turned their eyes to Steve, waiting for the processing of information into orders. They’ll believe Bucky if Steve believes him. Bucky’s confidence makes Steve want to believe him. That, and the violent resistance in his heart to the idea that the man who insisted on watching his back would be willing to lead him into danger now.

“We’ll get Tony in close enough to let Jarvis get a read,” Steve says. “If Jarvis can intercept their communications we’ll leave the dishes up, stage a retreat. If Jarvis can’t help us, we bring the place down.”

“Roger that,” Natasha says.

“Everybody, suit up. Barnes, standby.”

“Understood.”

The com clicks off. But as he climbs into Captain America’s uniform Steve can still see Bucky in his mind’s eye, at the console with SHIELD, feels him still watching. Like he was behind the plexiglass, and in the glass bottles in Steve’s apartment, his attention almost a sensation of touch on Steve’s back. Steve rolls his shoulders, and smacks the shield into place to dissipate it.

Steve doesn’t dare wonder how Tony’s planes travel, how technology has so detached all of the Avengers from time. But they are over Hydra’s airspace sooner than Steve could’ve guessed. Tony circles and carries on a conversation with Jarvis in his suit, in the cockpit.

“I can pick up their signals but it’s gibberish on this end,” Tony says eventually. “I have to get Jarvis direct access.”

“Get Barnes back on line,” Steve says.

Tony nods. “Hey, Bucky Bourne? We’re gonna need direct access to their feeds for this to work.”

“That means the main base under the array,” Bucky says. “If you want to get close, stay low. The targeting on those turrets is garbage at any lower than about fifty feet.”

“Doable,” Tony says.

“And it’s ‘Barnes.’”

“I know that. It was a…”

Tony sighs.

“Nevermind. One of you was bad enough. I’m never going to get a laugh around here.”

“We want him patched in to our field coms?” Clint asks, admirably phrasing his opinion as a question.

“Eyes in the sky,” Tony says. “Sounds handy.”

Steve nods slowly. Would be handy. And the more he hears Bucky talk the more his own memories resurface to remind him of the sound of Bucky’s confidence in truth, where the cracks showed when he lied. The sheer volume of them makes him take the risk. Bucky sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.

“Do it,” Steve says.

“Are you… sure about that?” Sam says.

“We’ve trusted him this far,” Steve says.

Natasha shares her misgivings silently and only with Clint. But Clint’s shrug and small adjustment of his earpiece are his reassurance. Natasha nods. Professionals.

“Barnes we’re taking you with us,” Steve says. “Keep your eyes open.”

“Ready and waiting,” Bucky says, directly into Steve’s ear. “I’ve got you all up on visuals and I’ll call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

The plane lands smoothly and the opening ramp reveals lush forest and deeply grooved stone, sweet smelling air gently cool. At a distance Hydra’s base truly appears to be a research station, taking advantage of an ancient plateau standing above the landscape, dedicated to harmless science of the stars. Only closer to does it become apparent that the paths up to it are patrolled, crawling with armed guards. Hydra manages to destroy such beautiful things.

“Ignore the buildings above ground,” Bucky says. “They’re just for show. Start at the base of the hill, follow their paths around the back. They’ve got barracks at the control center so you’ll be fighting the whole way.”

“Barton take point,” Steve says. “Romanov, we’ll cover Wilson and Stark close enough to blow those turrets and open up their airspace.”

Clint vanishes in the underbrush. The Avengers weave up the foot paved tracks, lead by arrows and followed by repulsors. Guards fall and are replaced. And Bucky’s clipped directions narrate their assault.

“Barton stop moving. Two patrols, on your twelve. Wait. Go, now.”

“Rogers you’re coming up on the first turret, on your two. You got grenades, now would be the time to use them.”

Steve finds himself looking over his shoulder, hearing Bucky’s voice and expecting to see his face. He drags his eyes forward and unclips a grenade from his belt. Close enough. He pulls the pin and tosses it, crouches down behind the shield and waits, until after the boom and the ping of rubble against the shield.

“Wilson you can get some height. Patrols moving in to see what the fuss is about.”

“Romanov you’re about to get pinned down at that turret. Blow it and get out of there.”

As the airspace clears Sam and Tony take off and advance. Missiles collapse the outbuildings, shattering the illusion of a legitimate facility when they fall apart, empty inside.

“Stark you’re too high. You’re going to take fire-”

Bullets rip through the air. They ping into Tony’s armor, and buffet him, shifting his trajectory. He pivots in the air and returns fire, and the turret explodes in white hot shrapnel.

“What the hell is that suit made of?” Bucky exclaims. “Stark, ignore me. You can do whatever you want.”

“Smart man,” Tony says.

“I disagree with his assessment sir,” Jarvis says.

“Smart robot,” Clint says.

Paths converge leading downward under enormous white dishes, rotating slowly. It would be so much easier to tear the whole place down, set charges and walk away, rip holes in Hydra and watch them bleed. But the cancer is larger than just one tumor.

“Rogers, you’re coming up on the main entrance. Expect resistance.”

“Always do.”

Steve follows the track down and sees guards on a door, ducks behind the shield before they open fire and braces against the impacts, and hurls the shield out at the door to ricochet between helmets and return to him, guards collapsing.

“Stark, you’ve got a clear path to Rogers.”

Steve hears Tony bank overhead and fly back around, firing missiles to blow the doors open into a tunnel sloping downward. Natasha flashes ahead of him, an electrical shadow, and the guards she touches fall to her sizzling weaponry.

“I’m going to lose visual on you underground,” Bucky says.

“Understood. Barton, Wilson, cover our backs.”

“Roger that.”

The tunnel opens into a control room, one door leading further into the hill. It begins to open and Natasha slams it closed with her foot. Steve throws the shield hard and it jams into the frame.

“That won’t hold for long,” Natasha says.

“Stark?”

Tony’s helmet shutters open and he stops at a computer terminal, tapping controls on his armor and on the display.

“What’s the verdict?”

“I believe I can trace and interpret these communications,” Jarvis answers.

“How much time do you need?”

“Approximately two minutes.”

The soldiers on the other side of the door hammer their shoulders into it, and the shield wobbles. Steve leans against the door and Natasha kicks the shield further into the frame.

“I’m sure you folks can kill two minutes,” Bucky says. “Anybody bring a deck of cards?”

“Not the time, Barnes,” Steve says.

“You seem to be doing alright,” Bucky says.

“Aces wild,” Tony says. “I insist.”

“I accept,” Bucky says. “Barton, watch your six, coming up over that ridge.”

The noise behind the door stops and Steve can hear the soldiers shuffling about inside, shouting at each other, probably the word “crowbar.”

“I have connected to their network,” Jarvis says.

“Fall back,” Steve says.

“Make it look good and they’ll think they’ve got you on the run,” Bucky says.

Steve takes hold of the shield and catches Natasha’s eye. A clang from the other side sounds like a crowbar wedged into the frame, and the shield falls free. Steve catches it and the door opens. He holds up the shield and Natasha fires over his shoulders. The soldiers dive for cover behind the wall. The Avengers turn and retreat up the tunnel.

“Wilson you’re about to pull that turret. Don’t make it look _too_ good.”

“Not. Helping.”

“Break off, head back to the plane,” Steve says.

“Aye Captain,” Clint says.

The released Hydra soldiers pour out of the base. Off of their carefully cleared path Tony and Sam are forced to ground and fire back at their level. Tony skimming the ground in long hops in the suit instead of flying high above them would be comical if Steve had the time to laugh at it. In a flat out run for the plane, he doesn’t.

Two of the soldiers crouch with a missile launcher between them. The Avengers vault over the edge of the plane’s ramp before it has fully opened. Jarvis begins raising it again. A roar overhead sounds too close for comfort.

“The plane is taking fire sir,” Jarvis says.

“Let ‘em,” Bucky says. “It’ll make ‘em feel better about themselves. Nothing they’ve got is going to penetrate.”

An explosion cracks outside and the plane tips.

“You sure about that?” Steve says.

“Yes?” Bucky says.

“Take us up!” Tony shouts.

The plane lifts off and the assembled slap into seats. They gain altitude and the explosions doppler away.

“Jarvis, are you still tracking their communications?” Steve says.

“Yes sir. Conveniently the SHIELD satellite arranged for this occasion will allow me to continue monitoring broadcasts from this location.”

“Happy to be of assistance,” Bucky says. “But you get to explain to SHIELD that you commandeered one of their satellites.”

“I’ll put it on the list,” Steve grumbles.

“Great job everybody,” Tony says. “Round of applause. Informant, take a bow. I vote we keep him on speed dial.”

“Hey, it kept me awake,” Bucky says. “And you’re lucky they hadn’t abandoned this one place I actually remember. I’ll do what I can for you but Hydra scrambles fast. Any intel you have now is going to be old news in a hurry, including mine.”

“Oh now you tell us you’re useless,” Clint says.

“Your words, not mine.”

“Thanks, Barnes,” Steve says. “We’ll be in touch.”

“I hope you get bored,” Bucky says.

Steve swallows. He can _see_ the look on Bucky's face, the little sideways smile. Maybe. Maybe, after they’ve cooled off from this one.

Sam pulls his goggles up to the top of his head, and taps his earpiece.

“So that’s the guy you knew,” Sam says.

“More or less,” Steve says.

“Still don’t see what the big deal is,” Sam says. But he’s smiling when he says it. Steve smiles back.

“He’s alright when you get used to him.”

“I can still hear you, you know.”

Sam smothers laughter behind his hand. Steve waves emphatically at Tony and cuts across his throat.

“Signing off, Barnes.”

“Yeah. Til next time.”

The line clicks. Steve sags back in his seat. 

This hardly could’ve gone better. Between the leads Jarvis picked up in Argentina and this real time stream of information they’ll have a plan. Huge win, no losses.

And Bucky… He fits into the plan, somewhere, now. Steve tries but he can’t imagine where. He’s a resource. But an old one. They got lucky. He said it himself. Maybe they’ll have need to call him again. And then again maybe they won’t.

Maybe Bucky earned some goodwill with SHIELD and maybe he lost some, going rogue but in a helpful way. Maybe they’ll be loosening their restraints on him and maybe tightening them.

Maybe he will be a presence moving alongside Steve again, in some capacity. The idea twines excitement and dread in Steve’s gut. But if their new information is more useful than Bucky’s old then Steve has only his own reasons to seek Bucky’s presence, go back to New Jersey, hope maybe that if Bucky remembers so much that he remembers _everything_ and maybe, seeing where he is, knowing where he has been, hoping that he doesn’t.

Too many bridges Steve can’t cross until he comes to them. He’s restless on the flight home, quiet with his frustration. Sam doesn’t try to joke with him again.

Returning to his apartment he drops into bed and sleeps fitfully. And over breakfast the next morning, he moves Bucky’s ring off of his kitchen table into a side table drawer. Another decision for another day.


	14. Chapter 14

Steve’s phone rings as he’s tying his shoelaces. Maria Hill. He ignores it. He can anticipate what she will say to him and he has no particular desire to defend himself to her. It won’t change anything. He drops the phone in a duffle bag and lifts it to his shoulder, locks his apartment and walks down to the subway.

His membership to the boxing gym across town costs more than the standard, considering the damage he does to the equipment. Worth it. He refuses to pay for it in celebrity and asked very politely that the owner not make a big deal about it. When Steve walks through the door he sees the stooped little man yelling instructions to a couple of teenagers sparring in the ring, and leaves him to it. 

Underground, his phone isn’t going to ring again. Steve considers it one of the benefits of his membership. A couple of hours when he can’t be reached. He sets up a heavy bag, tapes his hands, and turns his back to the ring and the flurry of activity. He takes a deep breath, plants his feet, and starts to move.

He hasn’t discovered since the serum whether or not he needs the exercise to keep the ability. Hasn’t stopped to find out. It is its own reward. The activation of limbs is simple, and the jolt of impact is clear. Muscles pull bones in smooth lines and curves and find their precise destinations indenting leather into sand. Steve’s fists do as he tells them, again and again.

Thumping music plays, heavy on the bass drum, something Steve doesn’t know or particularly like but the beat winds into his arms. No doubt that’s part of the reason the owner chose it. The chain jangles above him and Steve dials himself back, sets an expectation of duration instead of damage and settles into it.

His thoughts thin. Complicated processes shut down slowly. A command becomes a motion, instruction to an arm swinging. It causes a sound and a feeling, knuckles smacking. Punching, happening, repeating. His body obeys him and when he asks it to it becomes him, just for a little while, in force. 

He moves until he can feel the movements in strain, the prickle of sweat on his face, the rawness of harsh breaths in his chest. He moves past that until old fear alerts him to his heartbeat, learned limitations he couldn’t surpass and survive. He moves until he’s past the point once marked as death, now simply marked as tired. He stops only when he decides he has successfully wasted the morning. In an hour he’ll be able to do it all again.

When he turns around, the kids are gone, and the owner is sitting in a folding chair with his feet up and a newspaper open, trying to pretend he’s not watching Captain America. Steve wipes his face off on the front of his shirt, and nods at him. The owner nods back. He said his great-grandfather fought with Steve’s father in the Great War. Steve doesn’t know if it’s true. It might be. When he sheepishly invited Steve to Thanksgiving dinner he said his wife put him up to it. Steve very politely declined, and sent his thanks home to her. 

Today Steve is glad he doesn’t feel the need for conversation. Steve leaves the bag hanging. This time he left the seams intact. No harm done. He picks up his duffle bag and takes it to the showers. Strips to stand under the ice cold water and lets the water strip away the sweat. Reaching his arms over his head to pull on a clean shirt he notes the tension in his arms already fading. And he wishes that some part of it would last, that he could keep some of the calm of exertion, as he prepares to go aboveground again.

Five missed calls on the surface. Maria Hill. But also Tony. One message. Come to the Tower. Regroup after Latvia. That, Steve can do. He gets back onto the subway.

The Avengers’ headquarters is a looming threat over the city, the knife edged building slicing the sky. But Steve tells himself, every time he sees it, that at least it’s visible, and honest about what it is, branded on the side and brightly lit at all hours. Tourists mill around on the sidewalk outside with their cameras out, posing and smiling, and Steve can’t hear them but he knows they’re telling each other stories he was there for, and telling them wrong.

He enters the law offices across the street, one of Tony’s but most people don’t know that. The secretary at the desk tenses when she sees him but she knows. He walks through the door at the back, down the stairs, across the street under it in connected basements, and back up into the Tower. Tony didn’t exactly tell Steve about his back entrance but he said enough that Steve checked it out. Easier than struggling through the tourists. 

The Tower’s private elevator accepts Steve’s thumbprint and escorts him to the top floor and the Avengers’ meeting room-cum-bar, as anything would be with Tony Stark involved. Tony is already drinking, some golden liquid wrapped around an enormous ice cube, and gesturing with the glass. Steve is unsurprised to see Natasha, and Sam, and Clint, sitting at the table. He is momentarily surprised to see Maria Hill. Though it makes sense. Steve avoids her gaze, and takes a seat.

“Cap, glad you could make it,” Tony says. “I was just thanking agent Hill for the very useful satellite. I wonder, was it always positioned over that Hydra base in Latvia? Maybe some tentacle you didn’t know about stuck it there?”

Hill crosses her hands on an electronic tablet on the table in front of her. “That’s classified,” she says. Steve suspects it’s to encode the fact that she doesn’t know. Hydra hid themselves so effectively that even SHIELD wasn’t sure where it ended and Hydra began.

“I’ve had Jarvis running decryption on their communications,” Tony says. “They’re using an original algorithm and it’s a pain in the ass to decipher but he’s made some progress.”

“I have prioritized certain information,” Jarvis invisible presence speaks from the walls. “A recent transmission appears to contain references to the staff used by Loki of Asgard.”

Clint bristles, and sits straighter in his chair.

“What can Hydra do with Loki’s staff?” he asks.

“Whatever they want,” Tony says. “We did some scans of it before New York and it’s a containment device for a power like the Cube.”

“Power Hydra has used before,” Steve says darkly. “Where is the staff now?”

“Unknown,” Jarvis answers. “The transmission did not note a location, but did suggest that it is in the charge of one Baron Wolfgang von Strucker.”

“He wasn’t a part of SHIELD,” Hill says. “Not a double agent. Strictly Hydra. One of their scientists.”

“Good thing we know a Hydra agent,” Tony says, and clinks his ice cube at her. “Give him a call.”

“Mister Barnes is unavailable at the moment.”

Steve’s suspicion homes in on the word “unavailable.”

“When will he be available?” Steve asks.

“When I tell you he’s available, Captain Rogers,” Hill replies coolly.

Steve leans forward onto the table, suspicion starting to glow at the edges with anger. Whether or not he wants to go back to New Jersey is his business but if Hill thinks she can stand in his way… 

“Alright, what else do we know?” Sam says, yanking the conversation back on track. “Loki had the staff in New York. What happened to it after that?”

“SHIELD took it into custody after Loki and the Chitauri were defeated,” Hill says.

“Who?” Steve demands. “Who took it?”

Hill’s expression passes quickly through frustration and hesitation, and lands in reluctance. “The agent charged with transporting it was Jasper Sitwell. Brock Rumlow and his STRIKE team escorted him.”

“God dammit…” Steve growls.

“Undercover Hydra,” Natasha says for Tony’s benefit.

“And where are they now?” Tony asks.

“Sitwell is dead,” Sam says simply. 

Better that, than explaining he’d been driving the car the Winter Soldier yanked Sitwell out of. One more dark corner that doesn’t need the light shined into it.

“Rumlow was hospitalized after D.C. and disappeared from custody about a month ago,” Hill says.

“That would’ve been good to know,” Steve says.

“When, sir?” Hill says.

Steve grits his teeth.

“Sounds like this shifts our priorities,” Clint says.

“Sure does,” Tony says. “Jarvis, add Rumlow to your list. Maybe if we find him we can pick up a trail on this Strucker and the staff.”

“Of course sir.”

Tony drains his glass and sucks air through his teeth.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming,” he says. “It seems I have some work to do. Have a drink on your way out, nothing from the top shelf.”

He stands and leaves the table, tapping his watch and starting a conversation with Jarvis. The assembled follow his example, none of them taking him up on the drink, all of them moving off to the exits. Hill retrieves her tablet from the table, and moves quickly to block Steve’s path.

“I’d like a moment of your time Captain Rogers,” she says.

Steve expected that. Sam glances back over his shoulder and narrows his eyes, but Steve waves him on.

“Yeah, alright,” Steve says.

When the doors close behind the others Hill says what Steve anticipated she would say. “I’d like to talk to you about your last visit to our facility.”

Steve doesn’t. He would do the same thing again in the same position.

“You going to tell me not to come back?” he asks.

“I can’t imagine that you would care at all if I did sir.”

“You’re right, I don’t really care. But you tell me this. Are you punishing him for Latvia?”

“No, sir. We are determining how to proceed. You jumped chain of command and gave him contact we hadn’t cleared him for.”

“Did you have any better ideas?”

“We are working on some. Which you would have known, if you had asked before taking matters into your own hands.”

Steve shrugs. Immunity to guilt trips for his confident decisions is something Steve suspects he was born with and has nothing to do with the serum.

“He remembered the entire layout of that base,” Steve says. “He made it sound like there’s more he remembers, he’s just not sure it’s relevant now that Hydra has been exposed. So, there. You got what you wanted.”

“Captain why is it so difficult for you to believe that we actually want to help him?”

She sounds genuinely exasperated. But hers has nothing on Steve’s. He snaps, “How can you ask me that? Fury’s lies, SHIELD’s secrets, you made it _so easy_ for Hydra…”

“And that’s done now. Give me some credit, sir, I’ve learned a lot from Nick Fury. Including from his mistakes.”

Steve stops. Lessons learned from secrets kept. That gives him a small pang of guilt.

“I’m listening,” he says.

“The memory machine isn’t a magic wand,” Hill says. “We’re doing the best we can. But we aren’t just trying to get intel out of a Hydra agent. We’re trying to heal a hero.”

The word lands like a blow. Steve would’ve called Bucky a hero. When Steve thought he was dead, he would’ve called Bucky a hero. Hill is saying it _now_.

“I know this means much more to you than it does to us but I have tried to tell you,” Hill says. “I went to SHIELD’s academy and I walked under Bucky Barnes name every day on my way to class. So did most of the agents in that base.”

Bucky is a hero to them. Steve is used to seeing himself that way. Hasn’t seen Bucky through their eyes.

“Do you know what he did to the first agents we sent in to talk to him? The ones who were - ” She looks aside in recollection. “ - ready to wet themselves?”

Steve chills.

“What?”

Hill smiles slightly.

“He spent an hour teaching them unrepeatable curse words in five different languages.”

Steve starts a response, and doubts it. He’s not sure he heard her correctly.

“He did what?”

“As I understand it they had the most difficulty with Korean but he was very patient.”

“I’m not, agent Hill.”

She sighs, and nods, and holds up her hands in placating explanation.

“The agents we sent in were well trained but they were young and physically small. If we’d sent in a threat he would’ve behaved like we threatened him. So we didn’t. And he played with them.”

The glowing edges of Steve’s suspicion fade. SHIELD deliberately didn’t threaten him? His reaction to kids he could’ve swatted aside was goofing around? Hill would know better than to lie to Steve, when he could so easily verify what she said with Bucky himself. Reasonable to assume it’s true. Steve feels suspicion start to change shape, trying to form into optimism.

“Why are you telling me this?” he says.

“Because I think that you will be less of a headache for me if you believe that we actually want to help him and we know what we’re doing. Sir.”

Steve smiles a bit to concede her point. And because he might believe it.

“Are you going to let him keep helping the Avengers?”

“I won’t commit to that at this time. But Hydra needs to be stopped. If we can help each other… it would be a shame not to.”

She holds the tablet out to Steve.

“After you signed off from your mission in Latvia he asked to talk to those agents again,” she says. “He wanted to start debriefing. I’m sharing this information with you. I hope you appreciate it.”

Steve takes the tablet from her hand. Debriefing the Winter Soldier… He’s not sure he appreciates that information.

“Thank you,” he says anyway. An acceptable lie.

“The file will delete itself in twenty four hours,” Hill says. “And it’s for your eyes only. You understand.”

“I do.”

“I’d like to think we’re working together, Captain Rogers.”

“So would I, agent Hill.”

Hill turns, and leaves Steve alone in the room. He considers the tablet. He could take it home. But anything on it would be heavily classified, best kept in the Avengers’ security. He sits at the table. Best here and now. He taps the screen.

An instruction appears telling him to place his thumb on the sensor. He does so.

An instruction appears telling him to state his name aloud. He does so.

An instruction appears telling him to position its camera on his face.

“Jesus…” Steve mutters. He does so.

The tablet’s screen shows a paused video. Footage from the camera in Bucky’s cell, behind the agents sitting at the table, trained on Bucky, who stands behind the plexiglass again. His hands are clasped behind his back, and his spine is rail straight, reporting for duty. 

Steve rarely saw him do that in seriousness. Whenever he stood to attention for Steve or even saluted him Bucky cracked up laughing. Steve could hardly stand on ceremony with him, as long as no one else under his command picked up doing it. They didn’t. Still and always Steve wonders how much they really knew, about _why_ Bucky got away with it.

Steve taps the screen to start the video playing.

“State your name for the record,” one of the agents says.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky says. “Relevant known alias… the Winter Soldier.”

Steve sets the tablet down. It is inexplicably heavy.

“Your mission report begins April fourth, two thousand fourteen in Washington D.C.,” the other agent says.

“Yes ma’am,” Bucky says. “Until that day I had been held in cryostasis by agents of Hydra for an indeterminate period of time. I was activated under orders from Alexander Pierce for the protection of Project Insight.”

His voice is cold and straightforward. He could be reciting regulations for the proper care of his bunk and boots. Things that simply are and mean nothing to him.

“Primary mission objective was the elimination of Nick Fury by any means necessary. Additional complications necessitated mission objectives of eliminating Jasper Sitwell…”

Bucky pauses, lifts his chin, and continues.

“… and Captain America.”

Steve stops the video. He knew. He was there. But Jesus hearing such a mockery of such a beautiful voice… Such a beautiful man… 

It tracks, perfectly, that the man he knew would be laughing with little strangers. But Hill thought that _this_ was the information she should share with Steve. Proof that Bucky remembers that Steve was his mission… 

Steve props his elbows on the table and covers his face with his hands. Tony’s shelves are lined with bottles and they taunt him. For anyone else they would be an escape. Anyone else could come to those bottles begging to forget. Swallow their rising sickness with alcohol and pretend that they could make this not be happening…

“You still here?”

Tony’s voice. Behind him.

Steve wipes his eyes before he uncovers his face. He keeps his back to Tony and drops the tablet in his duffle bag, picks it up and stands.

“Nope,” Steve says, and walks out.

He hopes that in any glimpse Tony got of his face, he just looked tired.


	15. Chapter 15

It takes Steve the better part of the afternoon to walk home. He’s in no hurry.

Lights are a cleaner white than they were before. Cars are faster and quieter. The smells cooked up by the sun baking the concrete are more industrial and less organic. But they’re not any more pleasant. The city is still the city. 

And the heat still makes the people quick and blind, only looking for the next patch of shade on the sidewalk to dart into. A hat and sunglasses are enough for Steve to hide under.

He can’t walk too quickly or he will barrel into the people in front of him. He can’t walk too slowly or the people behind him will barrel into him. Progress is a jostle mostly forward, occasionally sideways, long strides or short shuffling steps depending. If he’s paying attention he knows which is necessary.

Moving in a crowd alone always felt like combat to Steve. Leftover dread from being small and overlooked, crushed between adversaries preventing him from reaching his destination.

But when he was with Bucky it felt like dancing. Bucky sidled through the press of bodies and Steve followed in his wake, stepping where he stepped, borrowing his grace. The whole world, animate and not, registered as a challenge to Steve. And a companion to Bucky.

Steve never thought to tell him. Never thought he’d have cause to miss it.

Steve’s duffle bag bumps into the knee of the person next to him. They turn their head a fraction of a degree and swing front again. Steve pulls the bag closer to his hip. He’s not paying enough attention.

He hasn’t forgotten. He almost resents that Bucky came out with a clean slate and the ability to pick and choose, if Maria Hill was right about the memory machine. Steve couldn’t forget, but hasn’t addressed it in so long. Dismissed memories in distant corners weren’t forgotten, but were quiet.

He’d spent years following Bucky without knowing why, only knowing that moving through the world was easier when he was nearby. A bigger boy from a higher grade, maybe an unlikely friend, but he was a neighbor in the tenement and their mothers had formed a small alliance in poverty. Bucky was always, just, there. And things were better, when he was there.

The traffic light at the corner turns red. The crowd bunches up on the curb. Steve lets it flow past him and stands at the outside to wait. The person he’d bumped into gives him a second glance. Steve nods. They shake their head. The light turns green and the people take off again.

The first time Bucky kissed him Steve didn’t know why. They were at some tender age when kissing was still a game that friends played. When they were walking home from school and Bucky grabbed Steve’s arm and spun him around and pressed their lips together quickly Steve only read it as playground fun.

He didn’t mind. It was nice. Some vague sense stirred in his gut that Bucky’s lips felt good. But it didn’t stick. Maybe Bucky saw it on Steve’s face, that he didn’t get it. He let go of Steve’s arm, and gently shoved him onwards, and didn’t kiss him again.

Steve turns at The Corner and leaves the crowd behind. The bartender is setting up chairs inside, preparing to open. Steve passes it by and continues to his building, pulls a key out of his pocket, opens the street door. Most of the buildings in the neighborhood use codes and buzzers. He’d rather have a key.

Their first kiss hadn’t stuck but it hadn’t driven them apart. Steve gained years with Bucky, at school and family dinners and neighborhood baseball games Steve didn’t play but watched to watch Bucky. Steve was fascinated by his stride up to the plate, his strong and effortless run, his genial confidence talking to teammates and opponents alike. Steve gained years and he gained insight and slowly dawning realization, a rending contradiction between wanting Bucky and wanting to be him.

Steve locks his apartment door and drops his duffle bag on the couch. He pulls out the clothes from the gym and tosses them in the laundry. He pulls out the tablet from Maria Hill, and stares at it. 

The video is longer than what he watched. Hours long. He’s not sure he could stomach a recount of D.C. Or what else Bucky might have seen fit to talk about. Years worth of Hydra before.

Or, how Bucky came to remember. What he came to remember. How much was a result of time and how much was SHIELD.

Or how much was Steve.

The first time Steve kissed Bucky he knew exactly why. Sitting with Bucky at his kitchen table, trying to do his homework and trying harder not to watch Bucky’s eyes. Bucky was reading something he found interesting and the easy way he took in everything around him made Steve love him as much as he envied him.

Bucky looked up from his book and saw Steve watching him, and his expression changed. While he’d enjoyed whatever he was reading, his smile when he met Steve’s eyes was a sweet and personal pleasure. He liked that Steve was watching him. Wanted Steve to know it. Maybe always had. And Steve needed, in that moment, to have him.

He stood up and leaned down over Bucky’s chair and kissed him. He felt the awkwardness in his crooked spine and unstable footing but refused to give in to it and pull away. He was risking utter failure trying something Bucky would do, something Bucky had done, not as well as he had done it, but Steve would’ve been risking more not to.

Bucky wrapped his arm around Steve’s waist and pulled him down sideways onto his lap, held him and kissed him back. Bucky’s certainty wiped out Steve’s awkwardness. And it was more than nice. Bucky’s lips felt incredible and his tongue threatened Steve’s sanity. They had to stop when they were both breathless because Bucky’s mother was going to come home and they didn’t have time for more.

And it stuck. Kissing became one of the things they did when they were alone. And they made time for more. Bucky joked with Steve til the day he died that kissing him was the bravest thing Steve ever did.

Steve unlocks the tablet. He sets it down and lights a cigarette and drags slowly. Smoke burns his throat. The cherry blooms and ash crackles. A tangible bit of destruction at his fingertips. Maybe it’s more than just a habit.

Steve starts the video playing.

“An initial attempt was made to eliminate Nick Fury in his vehicle. This attempt failed…”

Steve skips randomly forward in the video.

“...preventing Captain America and his allies from destroying the Insight hellicarriers…”

Steve skips randomly forward in the video.

“About a week and a half,” Bucky answers a question Steve skipped. “I was… confused, at that point.”

Steve sits down and listens.

“I had an understanding of the modern geography of the United States that was part of Hydra’s baseline programming. I knew that I was in Washington D.C. and I knew that I was trying to go… home. But I didn’t know much else.”

“Home for you would have been Brooklyn?” one of the agents asks.

“Home for me…”

Bucky drops his hands from behind his back and brings them together in front. He looks down at the floor, and worries one of the lines in his left wrist with a fingernail.

“Everyone knows the Avengers’ headquarters is in New York. Posters are still up. I got to the city, and… I knew that the Avengers were there. And that Captain America was one of them. Hydra’s directives faded out slowly. Steve - Captain America - we lived in the same building growing up. Home, for me…”

He clasps his left wrist in his right hand and raises himself straight.

“As I said I was confused at that point.”

Steve pauses the video. He smokes down the cigarette in silence. Every way he turns Bucky’s words over and fits them together he hates more than the last. Worst the way he says “Captain America” as a clipped title and “Steve” like it’s a name. Like he didn’t know, or didn’t care, that they were the same.

Steve skips forward to the end of the video.

“... hard to put a puzzle together without the picture on the box,” Bucky says. “You’re asking if I remember things I’ve forgotten and I just don’t think I can answer that question.”

His eyes are bright and his tone lilts. Steve can hear the lilt in the agent’s response too. He missed a shift in the character of the conversation.

“That’s a good point,” the agent says. “But it is your intention to continue debriefing with the events you do remember?”

“Yes ma’am. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be a part of Hydra. Now in fairness nobody asked me if I wanted to be a part of SHIELD either, but since I’m here…”

Bucky holds up his hands in balancing scales and rocks them back and forth. He says something in a language Steve doesn’t understand, but the agents seem to get the joke, and it makes Bucky smile, satisfied.

“For the record, how many languages do you speak?” one of the agents asks.

Bucky shrugs.

“A few. I dunno, hum a few bars and I’ll see if I can pick it up.”

Steve stops the video. That seems to be the end of the interview. His cigarette has burned down and he stubs it out in a coffee cup.

It occurs to Steve that he has the picture on the box. Or at least the corner pieces and some of the edges of the puzzle. He’s missing the pieces between the train and D.C. and the cynic in him says that’s the time period that most interests SHIELD. They might not care if Bucky remembers the building they grew up in.

Steve cares. The cautious optimist in him reminds him of Maria Hill’s desperation to make him understand how they saw Bucky Barnes. And the unexpected self sacrifice of Cavanaugh in the Triskelion. 

It may be too late to call Cavanaugh today. The sun has dropped behind the buildings and now that Steve doesn’t need it the streets are painted in shade.

It would be offensive if SHIELD decided everything that Bucky remembers. 

That does it. 

If it’s too late then the car service won’t answer. No cost in calling. Steve calls. And the car service answers. Maria Hill hasn’t cut him off yet.

He paces outside his apartment waiting for Cavanaugh. He’s going to be keeping the man out all night. He just can’t find it in himself to be bothered by that.


	16. Chapter 16

SHIELD runs a skeleton crew at night. They look at Steve confused, and one of the lab coats pointedly looks at her watch when he passes her by, but they let him through. The privileges of rank.

Bucky paces behind the plexiglass, reading from the tablet and whistling to himself. He stops and looks up when the door opens, and a lock of hair spills across the side of his face. He gathers it behind his ear with one free finger.

“I thought you’d still be out fighting,” Bucky says.

Steve never imagined his hair could get so long. He has a hard time not watching it brushing Bucky’s neck. 

“Don’t know where yet,” Steve says. “Romanov and Jarvis are working out targets.”

“And Jarvis is… ?”

“Stark’s computer.”

Bucky lets out a long breath and tosses the tablet on the cot.

“Would’ve bet money that was a person,” he says. “Living in the future, man.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I might.”

Steve concedes. He’d said it without thinking. Doesn’t know what Bucky experienced with Hydra. Isn’t going to ask.

“Maria Hill gave me your debrief,” Steve says.

“No surprise.”

Unasked for connections in the back of Steve’s mind wonder whether Bucky’s hair continued to grow while he was in stasis or if he could tell real time awake by how long it was. The conjured image of Hydra agents putting hands on him to cut his hair is revolting and Steve forces it out of his mind.

“I heard what you said, about going home,” Steve says. “So, what… Do you remember? Home?”

“Bits and pieces,” Bucky says carefully.

“You’re hedging.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Steve sighs. He’s fairly certain he wouldn’t. But very certain that he didn’t come to argue.

“Let’s try that again…” Steve says.

“Let’s do that.”

“I want to talk.”

Bucky hesitates. His eyes dart from side to side. For the first time it occurs to Steve that nobody, including him, asked Bucky if he wanted to remember. That he might not. And Steve is slightly ashamed, that it is the first time.

“I know it’s late,” Steve says. “But I figure… I’ve got more of those bits and pieces. If you want ‘em.”

Bucky’s gaze settles on Steve and considers him for a moment. Steve steels himself. He’ll turn around if Bucky says no. He’ll give him that respect if no one else will.

“So talk,” Bucky says finally.

Steve nods. And sends up silent thanks. He pulls one of the chairs on his side away from the table and over to the barrier and sits. It feels more like having a conversation than standing. He hopes it looks that way too.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” Steve says. “Crappy tenement over a bakery.”

“Heard it,” Bucky says. “Neighbors down the hall. Single mom, one kid.”

“Nurse. Worked all night, slept all day, left the kid with the neighbors.”

“Heard it. Snot nosed kid needed somebody watching out for him.”

Steve swallows hard. Bucky had let that go without saying to spare his pride. 

“Dressmaker,” Steve says.

Bucky’s eyes narrow slightly. “Forget the punchline to that one.”

“Your mom,” Steve says.

Bucky inhales sharply and sits down on the edge of the cot. 

“God…” he says. “Yeah, as soon as you say it… Handmade clothes. Itching stitches.”

“That I wore after you did.”

“After I broke them in you mean, and they didn’t itch anymore.”

“Til you grew up too much faster and she had to make clothes for us both.”

Bucky drops his head into his hands.

“Christmas.”

“Every Christmas.”

“New clothes for Christmas… God, Steve, how do you remember all this?”

Nothing ever forced him to forget. And he never wanted to.

“That’s one thing I had that always worked right,” Steve says. “Kept you afloat in school that’s for sure.”

Bucky’s head jerks up.

“Now I know you’re telling that one backward,” he says. “I gave you all my homework the year before you got there and you had it in the bag.”

The conversation happens on its own, with its own momentum between challenge and response that takes no effort from either of them, practiced as they are at it.

“Only because I _did_ all of your homework,” Steve fires at him.

“Oh that’s rich!” Bucky returns. “You had the attention span of a drunk pigeon! So what you checked my arithmetic, you never would’ve turned in a book report if it wasn’t for me.”

“You couldn’t add the fingers on your own hands.”

“Now you listen here…”

Bucky holds up an accusing finger. He’s right handed. It’s just his right hand. He leans toward the barrier, hand raised. It’s a mild aggressive move, one that would’ve ended in Steve swatting his finger aside and a few laughing punches, before.

Bucky’s finger grazes the plexiglass. Their momentum crashes into it. Steve’s back presses into the chair. He refuses to believe the pressure driving him back is fear.

Bucky closes his hand in a fist and knocks it on the barrier. The sound reverberates.

“This… is annoying,” Bucky says, pressing his knuckles into the plexiglass.

And it doesn’t matter if he means the confinement, or the history, or the fear on Steve’s face.

“Yeah. It is.”

Steve taps his side of the barrier thoughtfully with the edge of his shoe. Then stands. He bangs on the blast door until one of the agents opens it.

“Any reason you can’t let me and my friend sit at this table here and play cards?” Steve asks.

“Officially no, sir…”

“Would you? You can close this door behind you.”

The agents shifts his eyes rapidly between Steve and Bucky. Steve stands in his line of sight. The agent pulls himself up, almost clicks his heels, and nods firmly.

“As you say sir.”

“Thank you.”

Bucky remains seated while the agent opens the barrier, and until he’s left the room and the blast door is closed again. As quickly as the agent gets through the task Steve suspects he’s relieved he didn’t have the Winter Soldier coming toward him. And that Bucky knows it.

But when the locks clang into place Bucky stands, and strolls to the exit from his cell.

“Do you, by chance, actually _have_ a deck of cards?” Bucky says.

“No.”

“Figured.”

Steve pushes the chair back to the table. Bucky steps cautiously over to the other. He watches Steve like a skeptic at a conjurer’s show, knowing it’s a trick but wondering how it was done.

“Thought you might want a change of scenery,” Steve says, trying to tip his hand.

“Sure, it’s all totally different from this side,” Bucky says dryly.

The plexiglass was very clean. Nearly invisible. By sight there’s no difference having Bucky standing on the outside of it. Not even the distance between them, something greater than arm’s length.

“You look good,” Steve says.

“No I don’t,” Bucky says.

Steve has to concede that too. Bucky is still a mess. Scrubs look like scrubs on anybody. To judge from his face he’s not getting much sleep, and SHIELD is probably keeping razors away from him.

He looks healthy, Steve meant to say. He walks without stumbling, and takes a seat at the table without having to catch himself on his hands. His eyes don’t spin. He looks sane.

“Food gotten any better?” Steve asks.

“Hell no,” Bucky says. “And they’re still holding out on cigarettes, the bastards.”

Steve doesn't register the impulse on a conscious level and can’t consciously resist it. He takes the other seat and pulls his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, holds it up and shakes it. A creeping sensation on the back of his neck tells him it’s a cruel tease.

Bucky’s glare, struggling to cover a grin, tells him it’s also pretty funny.

“You son of a bitch,” Bucky grumbles.

Steve has nothing to cover a grin. Bucky holds up a steel middle finger.

Steve had heard him clearly through the barrier, somehow. His voice hadn’t been muffled by it. Or the whir of the machinery. By sound, there’s no difference.

Steve knows damned well the difference. If he wanted to he could reach across the table and swat Bucky’s finger down. If he’d used his right hand, Steve might have.

“You light up I’m gonna stop talking to you,” Bucky says, and drops his hand.

“I think I’m in enough trouble as it is," Steve says, and sticks the pack back in his pocket. "But this is your fault you know."

Bucky’s brow draws in. “Bullshit,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

It was a long time ago. Steve can assume it was just a long time ago, that any reasonable person forgets some things.

“You started first,” Steve says. “Joined up with the National Guard right out of high school, and you didn’t just smoke on base.”

“There’s no way I gave you cigarettes…" Bucky mutters.

“Not at home. I bummed them from you in Europe though.”

“Oh, well, shit, after the serum, can’t blame me for that can you?”

“Didn’t say I was blaming you. Said it was your fault.”

“Same fucking thing.”

“No it isn’t.”

Bucky doesn't argue. He watches, and listens, and the weight of his attention pulls Steve onward.

“Anyway you always had a pack and you were always around, so…" Steve says. "Y’know, people will let you walk off together if you say you’re going to have a smoke…”

Bucky pins Steve with an intense stare. Then flicks his eyes over Steve's head, to the camera in the corner.

It doesn’t mean he remembers, _why_ they were walking off together, and why it might not be a good idea to say it. Steve just can’t think of anything else it might mean.

“‘Course it was one of the only ways anybody could get five minutes of peace out there,” Steve says, deflecting. “And I would’ve stood out like a sore thumb if I didn’t.”

“Cuz the outfit blended right in with the troops,” Bucky quips.

“Well… I tried.”

Bucky lowers his stare, goes with the deflection. He idly bounces one of his feet. Steve can't shake the impression they're talking to avoid talking.

“Don’t really remember that," Bucky says. "I guess it’s just hard to kick a habit.”

“Yeah I never did try to quit," Steve says.

“Guess I probably should. Maybe I can get them to give me chewing gum.”

“Worked for your dad.”

“Did it?”

“Eventually.”

“Huh. Don’t remember that either.”

“He quit when Becca was born.”

“How do you remember it then?”

“Honestly? Mom told me. Hoping I’d never start.”

“Well that worked out. Should’ve listened to her.”

“Mom said a lot… that we, um… Neither of us, really listened to…”

Bucky doesn’t seem to pick up on the suggestion. Doesn’t indicate the camera again. Steve lets it go.

“She would’ve thrown a fit the first time I tried to enlist,” Steve says.

“At least you spared her that, God rest her soul.”

“Yeah…”

Sarah Rogers wasn’t blind. And stupid teenagers weren’t careful. She shouted and cried when she came home early and caught them half out of their pants and they weren’t going to stop like she wanted but, after, they were more careful. 

She loved them, he knew. Both of them. She was afraid for them. If she had been angry she would’ve told Bucky’s parents too.

“You made me throw that fit instead,” Bucky says. 

And he sounds sure. Telling a story he knows.

“Quite a few fits,” Steve says, because it's true.

“Must’ve been a dozen. Stubborn as you were.”

“You liked me stubborn,” Steve hears himself say.

He hadn’t meant to say it. Bucky freezes and his eyes bore into Steve. For an instant Steve is afraid that he’s looking _through_ , that the comment is going to make him vanish. That cost is too high, for reminding him. Steve desperately doesn’t want to regret just sitting across a table from him.

Then Bucky’s mouth turns up at the corner and his body thaws all at once, reclining back in the chair and stretching out his legs.

“Must’ve,” Bucky says. “Or I wouldn’t’ve liked you at all.”

Steve’s skin goes all over warm under Bucky’s smile. It’s almost as difficult to look at as if he had vanished. Steve mourned that smile.

The lights in the room dim, and brighten again. Bucky groans and rolls his eyes.

“Lights out,” Bucky says. “Five minute warning.”

It surprises Steve enough to dispel the warmth, somewhat. He acknowledges the disappointment. Tries to ignore the relief.

“Guess I’ll let you sleep then,” Steve says.

“Guess so.”

Bucky doesn’t move to stand until Steve is on his feet. Steve wonders if Bucky is giving him the same consideration he gave the SHIELD agent, to not have the Winter Soldier standing over him. 

But he doesn’t wonder it for long when they’re facing each other, level and only a step apart, and all Steve can think about is how strange it is to want to bolt as fast as he can and at the same time want to never leave. Bucky holds position with the same fight or flight tension of a wary animal waiting for it. Waiting for him. 

They’re alone, for a given definition. And there’s nothing in Steve’s way but himself.

Steve takes the first half step forward. Happiness flickers across Bucky’s face, quickly hidden. That is a habit Steve longs to watch him break. Bucky takes the other step to close the distance and Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. 

And he’s there. It doesn’t occur to Steve to wonder if his body feels the same because he feels completely present and for that moment it’s enough.

Bucky’s right arm twines tight around Steve’s back, and Steve can feel the movement in his shoulder starting to lift his left, hears the machinery hum. The sound stops when Bucky decides to let it hang at his side. 

“I missed you,” Bucky says softly.

“I missed you,” Steve says.

“I always…” Bucky says, and stops.

Steve’s face is in Bucky’s hair. He could drop his voice to a whisper, and say _something_ , ask and hope vainly that Bucky will hear him and the microphone won't. He could speak vaguely in code and hope Bucky understands. Or speak plainly and damn SHIELD if they give a shit.

If Bucky doesn’t remember at all, or if he remembers and doesn’t feel safe to say, what’s the difference?

In that moment… there isn’t one.

“It’s not over yet,” Steve says.

Bucky nods on his shoulder. Steve unwinds his arms and pulls away. He almost doesn’t trust himself to meet Bucky’s eyes. But whatever is there behind them, Bucky has strict control over it. 

“You know where I’ll be,” Bucky says.

“Yeah. I’ll see you.”

“You’d better.”

Steve bangs on the blast door. He turns back before he leaves through it and watches Bucky grab one of the chairs from the table, take it with him through the plexiglass, and set it down next to the cot. The lights dim again. A glow from the tablet’s screen illuminates Bucky sitting in the chair. More comfortable to read. If he’s not going to sleep. The door closes behind Steve.

“Everything alright, Captain?” Cavanaugh asks outside.

“That’s classified,” Steve replies. Cavanaugh doesn’t ask again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you how many times I rewrote this conversation.


	17. Chapter 17

Days pass.

Waiting on Natasha and Jarvis wears at Steve’s patience. He stalks the city and assaults the equipment at the gym feeling like a loaded gun with no finger on the trigger. Military intelligence had never been his strong suit. He always had to leave that to others and trust where they aimed him.

He could, now. Natasha may still carry an assortment of masks in her back pocket but her motives had been transparent since D.C. There was that to count on.

Steve tries to spend a quiet afternoon on the boardwalk with paper and pencil. He starts a sketch of the ferris wheel. He doesn’t finish it. Can’t sit still. He jogs home. He’s barely out of breath.

Clint texts him. His message reads, “Your friend cheats at cards.” Steve doubts it. More likely Clint doesn’t want to admit how badly he’d lost. But Steve is glad to see it. It means Clint picked up where Steve left off, and actually showed up with a deck. And Steve shouldn’t be the only person Bucky talks to.

Steve gets on the subway to make good on his commitment to Sam and bring the shield to the V.A. He plans to spend the time on the train thinking ahead of answers to questions the returned soldiers will probably ask that he does not want to answer. What was it like then? What is it like now?

The passengers around him on the subway don’t give him the time. They can see the shield and they can see his face. He nods and smiles, stands still for selfies and signs autographs, and answers questions he doesn’t want to answer without preparation. What was it like then? What is it like now?

Different kinds of awful.

He picks details that won’t hurt them too much. Toothpaste tastes better. Indoor plumbing works better. Kids who got sick like he did then can get medicine now. They laugh like it’s funny or nod like they understand.

Sam is surprised to see him walk into the meeting room and that smarts a little. Sam jibes him about the missed appointments in front of the attendees and Steve takes it on the chin. They look at Sam with a bit more admiration and Steve figures he’s closer to square.

They want to hold the shield. He lets them. They ask him the questions. He doesn’t pay much attention to his answers. He tries to remember their names. There are a lot of them.

Steve can’t see the sense in shopping for groceries when he’s expecting a call any minute. Hoping for a call, any minute. But Coca Cola keeps. He buys that and drinks it on his balcony and eats takeout. 

He looks at what Natasha was watching on his television. Her cooking shows don’t seem interesting.

He isn’t avoiding New Jersey. He isn’t. He’s thinking.

When Natasha knocks on his door he jumps at the chance to think about something else.

“Nat,” Steve says. “Do we have a mission?”

“We’ve got targets,” she says, frustrated, “but it’s all small stuff. Nothing on our main objective. I want to talk to your friend.”

The antipathy she manages to put into the word “friend” is effective. No, she doesn’t want to talk to him. But if she’s hit a dead end she feels like she has to.

“You sure about that?” Steve asks.

“Awh, are you scared for me?” Natasha trills. “That’s sweet Steve. But I can handle myself.”

She can, and did. Stood toe to toe with the Winter Soldier on the highway in D.C. despite her terror. Far be it from Steve to patronize her.

“Alright,” Steve says, and makes the call.

“I’ll take a drink if you’re offering,” Natasha says after he hangs up.

The way she leans on it she means alcohol and he doesn’t have any. He waves a hand around his kitchen.

“You can have anything you can find.”

“In that case I’ll buy you a bottle of something nice. Keep it for guests. What’ll you drink for the taste?”

Steve narrows his eyes.

“Had a fondness for German schnapps.”

“Good. Me too.”

Steve has absolutely no idea if that’s true.

He trails behind her to the bodega across the street. She buys a bottle and a sheaf of plastic cups and they sit on the curb to wait for the car. The liquor is sweet and sharp. The cups will be more useful.

“Settling your nerves?” Steve asks.

“I can’t just have a drink with a friend?”

“It’s a little suspicious at one o’clock in the afternoon. Unless you’re Tony Stark.”

Natasha smirks at him. “Maybe I am settling my nerves. A little. Or I’m planning ahead. Now I know you’ll have something I like.”

Steve scoffs. “Don’t feel like you have to be sober in my house anymore?”

Natasha elbows him. “I can handle my liquor too.”

Cavanaugh pulls up to the sidewalk shortly and they drain their cups. The driver gets out of the car, glances clean over Steve and scuttles hastily to open the door for Natasha, staring agog at her.

“Agent Romanov,” he says reverently.

“Not anymore,” she says. “Just Romanov.”

She favors Cavanaugh with a generous smile, a demure tilt of her head, and passes him her empty cup. He takes it unthinking. Natasha climbs smoothly into the back seat. Steve shakes his head and follows. He has seen her battered, and even he can scarcely believe he has, watching her when she doesn’t want it to be known.

“Well they still call him ‘Captain,’ ma’am,” Cavanaugh says.

“That was always more of a nickname than a real rank, hm?” Natasha says, turning her smile on Steve.

Steve bridles.

“Just don’t go telling any of my sergeants,” he says.

Natasha laughs as if what he said was funny enough to warrant it and she leans across the seat and affectionately strokes his arm. This mask of hers Steve particularly does not like. He wraps his hand tightly around the neck of the bottle.

Her presence causes a similar stir in the underground SHIELD base, a mass straightening of ties and brushing back of hair that Steve marvels at. Is it because she’s such an accomplished agent, or such a stunning woman? 

Or both? Probably both.

The only person who doesn’t appear stricken is Maria Hill, giving Natasha no more than a curt nod on their way past. They make their way to Bucky’s cell and leave the commotion outside of it. 

Bucky stands from his chair behind the barrier and greets Natasha in a language Steve doesn’t understand, though he thinks he hears her name in it. Natasha responds tersely. Steve tries to keep frustration off of his face. He’s too old to start learning Russian. Presuming it is Russian.

“So you recognize her?” Steve asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “She owes me a couple of bullets.”

Natasha’s expression washes over, subdued instantly. She learned from the same playbook Bucky did, picked up the same skills. Maybe Clint did too but Natasha isn’t Clint. She won’t be joking about what the Winter Soldier put her through.

And Bucky ducks his head to her, and says something with the tone of an apology. Natasha shows nothing, but when she responds there’s no rancor in her voice. Steve can live with that.

“Just want to ask you a couple of questions,” Natasha says.

“Go ahead,” Bucky says.

“What do you know about Baron Wolfgang von Strucker?”

“He’s a sadistic prick. Pretty sure I have him to thank for some later modifications. Why?”

“He took something we need to get back. Do you know where we can find him?”

Bucky spreads his hands.

“Sorry. Can’t help you. Strucker was always mobile. I can tell you where he was for about a week ten years ago. That’s all I’ve got.”

Natasha mutters something Steve doesn’t have to understand to know is rude.

“What about Brock Rumlow?” she asks.

“Just a jumped up lackey. No, I don’t know where he’d hole up either. What seems to be the problem?”

Natasha shifts her weight from one foot to the other, and glances at Steve. Someday, maybe, someone other than Clint will be able to talk to Bucky without checking with Steve first. Some other day. Steve nods assurance to Natasha.

“You were right,” she says to Bucky. “Hydra is scrambling. We used intel from the D.C. release to get this far but if we start following up on leads we’ve gotten from Latvia they’ll know we have information we shouldn’t have. We don’t want them plugging the leak until we find Strucker.”

Bucky hums understanding and looks away from her into the middle distance. The muscles in his jaw work randomly for a moment, investigating his teeth with his tongue. Mulling it over.

“That’s a problem I think I can help you with,” Bucky says. He faces front and crosses his arms behind his back. “Let me join you on the ground.”

“What?” Steve says sharply.

“Why?” Natasha says cautiously.

“Hydra told campfire stories about me. Not a lot of them knew my face, but this…” Bucky holds up his left arm, and the shifting metal plates flash under the fluorescent lights. “This, they recognize. If they see this, if they see me on the ground with you…”

“They’ll think you’re feeding us intel,” Natasha says.

Bucky taps the end of his nose.

“They didn’t keep records of where I went or what I did. Every new asshole I had to work with thought I’d been everywhere and knew everything. Hell they thought I was best friends with Red Skull himself. You want a cover story, I’m it.”

Wheels turn behind Natasha’s eyes. Steve can only see the process, not the outcome.

“That’s a big risk,” Natasha says. “If you come down with us and Hydra takes you out, first of all you’ll be dead, and second of all this whole plan goes to shit.”

Bucky chuckles.

“You think they can kill me?”

Steve wishes he had not heard the amused certainty in Bucky’s voice. Or imagined what Hydra must have done to make him so sure.

But Steve has seen it. Watched the Winter Soldier against the might of SHIELD in the Triskelion. And Bucky is still standing here.

Captain America wants that power on their side.

Steve wants the excuse to get him out of that cage.

“This is going to be a hard sell for Maria Hill,” Steve says.

“So sell it hard. You know I’m right. I’m just gathering dust here.”

“Give us a minute,” Steve says, and knocks on the blast door. In the outer control room he pulls Natasha into a corner, and the SHIELD agents pretend they can’t hear them talk to each other.

“You want to say yes don’t you?” he says.

“No I don’t,” Natasha replies firmly. “The idea of having him behind me gives me the creeps.”

That piece of truth snuck out from behind her mask. Steve is impressed she let it happen.

Natasha sighs. “But that’s personal. We need to be able to take any opening we find with Hydra.”

She steps up to Steve, hands on her hips, toes to his toes and as close to in his face as her stature can manage. “So I’m asking you this point blank and believe me I’ll know if you’re lying to me. If we put a gun in his hand do you think he’d point it at you?”

Steve gives her the respect of thinking about it before he lets his instincts answer. He weighs Bucky’s initial violent confusion with his current, apparent, clarity. But he knows which way the scales will tip. He has heard and felt enough. Hydra’s directives are not what he fears.

“No,” Steve says.

“Or any of us?”

“No.”

Natasha draws her phone out of her pocket and turns away from him.

“Then you take Maria Hill and I’ll take Tony.”

Steve nods. When his confidence costs him he doesn’t question it. When his confidence costs others, he adds it to the burden of responsibility and tries to carry it.

“Deal.”

The agents who couldn’t help but hear open the doors for him and point him to Hill’s office. She sits behind a desk and doesn’t stand when he walks in. When he starts to speak, she interrupts him.

“Agent Hill…”

“I heard. Start selling it.”

She’s watching a monitor on the wall, showing Bucky’s cell. Steve cuts to the chase, barricading his memories away from his words so he can use them all.

“I’ve fought with him and against him, ma’am,” Steve says. “I’m the only person alive who knows the difference. I don’t believe the man you have in that cell is the Winter Soldier.”

“I agree. But I’m not sure he’s capable of being an Avenger.”

“I’ve seen what he’s still capable of.”

“Then you understand.”

“No, I don’t. He can coordinate an assault on a base he hasn’t seen in thirty years. And he can break my ribs. He’ll be valuable to us in the field. And I believe he’s fit for duty ma’am.”

Hill nods, with a slight smile tugging at her eyes. Steve thinks it’s for herself. She already agreed with him. But she needed to hear Captain America defend it first. He swallows anger that she didn’t just come out and say it, and made him go through the motions.

“We’ll want to monitor him,” Hill says.

“How?”

“We can attach a tracker to the hardware of his arm.”

“Removable?” Steve growls.

“By SHIELD. When he’s back on base.”

Hill straightens a stack of paperwork on the desk in front of her.

“And we’ll send him with a team of agents. They’ll be on loan so you bring them all back.”

She had it planned. Probably already has the roster of agents lined up. She couldn’t have known how or when but she had contingencies. He underestimated her. Again.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Have agent Romanov contact us with the details.”

“It’s just Romanov, _agent_ Hill,” Steve says, and marches out of the room. Natasha doesn’t belong to them anymore.

Natasha meets him in the hallway, blinks at his dark expression, and then ignores it. She tips her phone at him.

“Tony’s on board,” she says.

“So is Hill. You line up one of those small targets and keep her in the loop.”

“ASAP,” she says. “I think we can be in the air tomorrow.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You look it.”

Steve puts in some effort to smooth his face over. It will take him some more practice.

“I’ll let him know,” Steve says. “You don’t have to come along.”

“Thanks,” Natasha says. “I’ll be alright, working with him. Don’t worry about that.”

Steve can try.

Bucky patrols the barrier. The prospect of release has him coiled tight and anxiously pacing. He swings around fast when Steve enters the room.

“Was Hill buying?” Bucky says.

“Yeah. She’ll let you go under surveillance. Do me a favor, don’t argue with them.”

Bucky waves an indifferent hand.

“Old news. When and where?”

Steve searches hard for duplicitousness in Bucky’s face. He may not know people as well as Romanov but he thinks he knows Bucky well enough to find the lines of guilt on his brow if there were any, the shift of secrets in his eyes if he were hiding a motive he isn’t sharing.

Steve sees defiance and excitement. And nothing else.

“Should be tomorrow,” Steve says.

Bucky unwinds, rolling his shoulders and tilting back his head. The relief of hearing good news. And nothing else.

“Can’t wait,” he says.

He looks it. Steve believes it. His cell is five paces across. He couldn’t even try to walk down to the boardwalk.

“Hey, Buck… Thank you.”

“Least I can do.”

Steve believes he means that too. Telling old stories might help SHIELD correct their history books but wouldn’t change anything now.

And it occurs to Steve that Bucky has mentioned revenge, multiple times. And that each time it was others deserving revenge against him. Never revenge he wanted to take, even against Hydra.

Steve lays his open hand on the plexiglass because he can’t touch him. Bucky mirrors it. Soon enough. 

Steve turns back to the base, and Natasha, the elevator, and the car. Natasha makes cheerful small talk with Cavanaugh. Steve doesn’t hear it. They get out in front of Steve’s apartment and Natasha hands him the bottle of schnapps.

“I need to go to the Tower,” she says. “Couple of things to sort out with Jarvis and we should be in business.”

“Not a problem. Then you can take Clint, and I’ll take Sam.”

“Oof. Deal. Good luck.”

She moves forward like she’s going to hug him and catches herself. Shuffling through masks faster than she can keep track of. She settles for bobbing her head and walking away to her car. As Steve fits his key into his lock he thinks maybe that itself was an act, what she wanted him to think he saw, to keep his guard down with her. 

He wonders if Natasha sees other people like this all the time. It’s exhausting. He can spare her a drink without that.

He sets the bottle on the counter and calls Sam. The phone connects and Sam says, “Hello?”

In the background Steve hears someone else say, “Who is it?”

And Sam says, “A friend from work. Gotta take this.”

Then footsteps, walking into a quieter room. Steve waits until they stop. And Sam says, “Yeah, Steve?”

Someone else who doesn’t know. Steve doesn’t think too hard about it. Sam’s life was always bigger than the Avengers. Somehow.

“Just letting you know Natasha is lining up a target. Taking off tomorrow.”

“And you are telling me instead of Natasha because… ?”

“Because we’re going to bring our informant with us.”

Sam sighs heavily.

“I knew you were gonna say that eventually.”

“He thinks and Natasha agreed that…”

“You don’t have to go into it Steve. He came through for us in Latvia. Just… You know you can’t afford to keep one eye on him and the other on the mission.”

“I won’t have to.”

“You just saying that cuz he’s your friend?”

“He wants the same thing we do. He offered.”

“For all our sakes, I hope this doesn’t bite you in the ass.”

“Yeah. Me too. Enjoy your evening.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow.”

Steve hangs up. He puts leftover takeout in his microwave.

While it spins he fishes Bucky’s ring out of the drawer and polishes it, better this time in the daylight and without his hands shaking.


	18. Chapter 18

Steve pulls on the gloves of his uniform and picks up the shield. Tony’s plane rumbles on the landing pad at the summit of the Avengers’ Tower. Natasha checks the ammunition in her pistols as they walk up the ramp. She has checked it twice already. Nervous habit.

Banner and Tony are aboard, waking up the plane and bickering about some new upgrade. They’re waiting on Clint and Sam, and the SHIELD agents they were promised. Natasha will be clicking out her magazines until they get here.

“Cap, will you tell him that the synchronization factor is within tolerances?” Tony says. “He won’t listen to me.”

“I’m not getting in the middle of that,” Steve says. “Even if I did know what it means.”

Clint saunters up the ramp a moment later, just ahead of Sam. Natasha stops counting her ammunition. Clint pats her shoulder. She reloads and holsters her pistol. Sam catches her eye and Steve turns away. Can’t get in the middle of that either.

“Hill knew time and place?” Sam says.

“Yes she did,” Natasha says.

“Maybe they got stuck in traffic,” Clint says.

“Speak of the devil,” Tony says, nodding out the open hatch.

Half a dozen of the SHIELD agents anonymized by face masks and helmets rather than sunglasses cross the landing pad. They surround one other in formation up the plane’s ramp.

“Getting a little crowded in here,” Sam grumbles.

The agent at their center is unmasked and unarmored. Dark hair tied back and beard neatly trimmed, black canvas fatigues and boots, self-assured stance on a broad and solid frame. He looks the way that new leather smells and when Steve recognizes his storm blue eyes Steve’s breathing goes so shallow he wouldn’t fog a mirror.

“Barnes?” Tony says. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you Stark,” he says.

He looks like a completely different human being. What right does he have to find a completely different way of being so beautiful?

“You probably meant my father,” Tony says. “Actually, you know what, I’m Stark too. Forget about it. Oh, I’m sorry. Too soon?”

Tony’s face is an open challenge. Banner walks away from his friend in disgust. But Tony is playing Bucky’s game. Steve hopes he remembers how to lose.

“How could anyone forget a Stark?” Bucky says. “Even me.”

Bucky smirks. Tony’s eyebrows bounce. Steve thinks the judges are holding up a couple of grudging eights. Steve is terrible at that game unless he’s playing it with Bucky. Bucky can play with anyone willing.

“Yep, I like him,” Tony says, and sits in the pilot’s chair, and turns his back.

Bucky glances at Steve and holds up one finger, marking his small victory. 

He must know how gorgeous he is. He couldn't have gotten that shave without a mirror. And the long sleeves of the fatigues cover the arm, motionless and silent with that hand in his pocket.

“Cap?” Tony says.

“Yeah, Tony?” Steve says.

“I said wheels up in ten.”

“Understood.”

The SHIELD agents spread out from Bucky, stowing gear and preparing harnesses for takeoff. Bucky takes a duffle bag from one of them and steps over to the cluster of Avengers who have met him before. He clears his throat and opens the zipper on the bag.

“I come bearing gifts,” he says.

He holds up a box of ammunition, and hands it to Clint. Clint passes it on to Natasha.

“SHIELD developed these,” Bucky says. “Non-lethal but I can tell you, they have more stopping power than some live rounds I’ve met.”

“We care about non-lethal with Hydra?” Sam says bitterly.

Bucky shrugs.

“We care about results. A few of those took me down. Against normal targets, it only takes one.”

“And it’s all they would give _you_ ,” Natasha says.

Bucky inhales slowly, exhales slowly.

“And it’s all they would give _me_ ,” he says.

“Too bad they didn’t give you arrowheads,” Clint says with a smile.

Bucky returns it tightly. “Yours are already better.”

“Damned right.”

Bucky holds the strap of the bag out to Sam. And Sam, to Steve’s surprise, takes it. It’s a bare and flimsy olive branch but better than nothing.

The ramp of the plane lifts and the engines whine louder. Sam and Natasha take seats next to each other and inspect the ammunition. When it passes muster both of them replace the bullets in their magazines. One thread of the knot in Steve’s stomach unwinds.

Bucky takes a seat flanked by SHIELD agents. One of them has a caduceus embroidered on his pocket and a hard sided case between his feet. Medics. At least they brought their own. Steve may very well be able to return all of the agents to Hill. They don’t deserve to lose friends over her misgivings.

Steve sits across from Bucky and tries his damnedest not to stare. The more Steve looks, and he can’t help but look, the more his face seems like an old sketch returned to for additional shading instead of a new one started fresh. The line of his jaw, now that Steve can see it, is the same. And the shape of his lips.

Bucky picks a knife out of his belt and raises it to his left shoulder. The blade flashes in his hand and slices through the stitches of the sleeve. He replaces the knife and rips the sleeve the rest of the way off. Tearing canvas exposes the bright red star and in turn every metal plate that had replaced skin, muscle, and bone.

“You gotta be so dramatic?” Sam says.

“Kinda defeats the purpose if they can't see it,” Bucky says.

“Scissors, man.”

“Don’t have scissors.”

The movement of his arm rolling out of the sleeve makes a sound that reminds Steve of gunfire, metal ripping air. It opens gaps between the plates that look like bloodless wounds. Bucky takes off the glove on his left hand to complete the reveal. Those intractable fingers will never be able to wear a ring again.

Steve can stop staring. That change is more than a pencil could account for.

When the plane reaches cruising altitude and the assembled unclip harnesses Bucky stands and the SHIELD agents don’t stop him. He moves into a conspiratorial distance from Steve and speaks quietly.

“You get one,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“You get one comment about the arm without worrying about hurting my feelings.”

He knew. Of course he knew.

“I'll pass,” Steve says. None of his thoughts need voice.

Tony ambles down the stairs from the cockpit, tapping his chin with a pen.

“Is that running on a bioelectric power cell?” Tony asks Bucky.

“I don’t know. I didn’t make it.”

Tony holds out the pen and raps it on Bucky’s arm. Bucky is too astounded to stop him.

“Chromium-vanadium alloy?”

“Beats me…”

“Hang out at the Tower after we get back to the city,” Tony says. “I’ve got something in the basement, might be able to upgrade you out of Soviet scraps.”

“I’ll… remember that.”

Banner comes down the stairs tugging at the cuffs of his shirt. Bucky’s double take only touches his eyes. He takes half a step backwards to a strategic position on Steve’s right. 

The way he looks at Banner is the way the rest of the plane looks at him. He knows who Banner is. SHIELD knew, so Hydra knew, so he knew. Steve could’ve told Bucky he’d be here. Banner is a nice guy. The Hulk can scare the shit out of the Winter Soldier.

“It’s okay,” Banner says. “Just don’t shoot me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bucky says quickly.

Natasha takes the middle of the plane and calls up Jarvis’ holographic display, showing a protected valley below the snowline of jagged mountains. 

“Here’s what we’re looking at,” she says. “A group of mercenaries with long ties to Hydra holed up in British Columbia after D.C. We think it’s our best chance for a lead on Rumlow. The Canadian government knows we’re en route and they’ll be handling arrests and interrogations after we’ve broken up the base.”

“So… Survivors? So not a job for the big guy,” Banner says hopefully.

“God willing,” Clint says.

“Keep an eye on my plane,” Tony says.

Banner visibly relaxes. So does Bucky. 

The SHIELD agents fidget like they have itchy trigger fingers. Vendettas are unpredictable.

“You all follow us in,” Steve says. “Just mop up behind us. I need to get you all back in one piece.”

“Yessir,” one agent says briskly. The name sewn into his uniform is “Lincoln,” and it’s marked differently than the others. Steve puts him down as whatever passes for a sergeant within SHIELD and leaves the agents’ specific movements to him.

“Barnes I want you covering us from here,” Natasha says, pointing out a hill outside the compound.

“Thought the point was for me to be visible,” Bucky says.

“So find a bad vantage point,” Sam says.

Bucky’s nostrils flare, but he says nothing. 

“As much as I hate saying this you’re the best sniper I’ve ever even heard of,” Natasha says.

“Hey!” Clint barks.

“With a gun,” Natasha continues. “Wave your arm around getting up the hill and stay there.”

It sounds suspiciously like she’s giving the orders and Bucky is suspicious. He hides it well but he turns to Steve to uphold them before he accepts.

They’re not the orders Steve would’ve given. He wants Bucky where he can see him. But he doesn’t like himself for that desire. 

Bucky was behind him shrouded on a hill all through the war and Steve left him to it. It is what he’s good at. One of the things he’s good at.

Steve does uphold Natasha. All Bucky has to see is his face impassive and he nods.

“Yes ma’am,” Bucky says.

The assembled upack gear and the SHIELD agents pass weaponry to Bucky. He slings a rifle over his shoulder and straps pistols to his thighs. But for the mask and the makeup he is the man on the bridge in D.C. Steve stops looking at him. It’s too hard to see the man on the bridge as beautiful.

It’s pissing rain when they land but that hardly slows down the Avengers. Bucky tramps along with Steve and Natasha through the opening line. He raises a pistol slowly on one guard with a radio in his hand, slowly enough that he can finish his warning to the others. Steve doesn’t understand it, but the word “soldat” repeated multiple times in a frantic yell he can guess at. 

The guard doesn’t have time to draw on Bucky. When he drops the radio he falls in a blue flash. Clint splits off to one side, no need to be told to find his own vantage point. And Bucky splits off to the other, following orders.

The battle sweeps them up. Sam and Tony take to the air above them and begin tightening their circle toward the center compound. Hydra scatters ahead of them and the SHIELD agents behind spray blue lines into the fray. They’re all using the freezing rounds Steve felt in his apartment. The Canadian government will have a lot of arrests and not a lot of corpses.

Shots crack and zing past all of them as they make their way forward. A guard raising his weapon on Steve falls before Steve can even pull up the shield. How Bucky and Clint manage to track them all and cover them all is beyond Steve. They’re silent on the coms and their shots don’t miss. Steve doesn’t turn to see Bucky. He’s with them.

Then Steve hears gunshots over the com, cracking metal without pinging ricochet.

“Shit!” Bucky shouts.

Two bangs from a pistol.

“Barnes!” Clint says.

Fear doesn’t have time to rise in Steve through the tide of battle before Bucky responds.

“Shit… I’m alright. Return fire, couple of ‘em got up the hill, took out my rifle. I’m alright, I’m coming down with you.”

“Stay where you are,” Natasha says.

“Did you fucking hear me? My rifle’s trashed, I’m no good up here!”

“You still got your scope you call ‘em from there!”

“Fuck! Fuck you, yeah, I’ve still got it, fine. Romanov, on your ten.”

Bucky swaps shots for directions and it’s not a fair trade. 

“Stark don’t let them get that launcher set up.”

He could’ve shot the operators.

He wouldn’t have lied. He wouldn’t have destroyed his own weapon to get down off the hill, to where he thinks he belongs. He wouldn’t have.

“Lincoln pull your men back!”

They get bogged down longer than Steve is comfortable with and he considers calling Bucky down anyway. But one more body on the ground isn’t better than a good pair of eyes over their heads. He decides Natasha made the right call this time.

“Barton you’ve got a shot on the one under Wilson.”

Finally they make enough progress to take down walls, remove cover, reduce the compound to scattered chunks of concrete and lots of still, breathing, soldiers. That seems more complicated than it’s worth. Military intelligence was never his strong suit.

Black helicopters appear over the edge of the mountains. Natasha touches her com. She says “Acknowledged” and Steve doesn’t hear it on his.

“The army is sending in a cleanup crew,” she says. “Back to the jet.”

Her arrangements. Steve relays it.

“Fall back everyone.”

The helicopters land and the assembled retrace their steps. Canadian armed forces touch the ground and they file into Tony’s plane. SUVs crunch up the narrow paths to the destruction and Natasha has a brief conversation with one of the better dressed men inside. Bucky trails last up the ramp before it closes.

“They’ll be in touch with us with anything they find out,” Natasha says.

“Understood,” Steve says.

Bucky throws the twisted rifle onto the deck of the plane. The side is smashed in clearly by round bullet impacts and not the impacts of a fist tough enough to do it. Steve knows Natasha would’ve been concerned about that. He decides he’s concerned on her behalf.

The rainwater dripping off of Bucky’s elbow is tinged red. There is a hole in his jacket.

“What did I tell you?” Bucky says. “If I were a lesser man I would think you were trying to get me killed.”

“Watch it,” Sam says.

Bucky can fight through a broken arm. Steve believes he could fight through bullet wounds. But he’d said nothing.

Steve wanted him where he could see him.

“You want me as a sniper you don’t get me visible,” Bucky says. “Pick one and let me do my job.”

“Bucky that’s enough,” Steve says.

“Your job is what we tell you it is,” Natasha snaps.

“This stops now!” Steve says. “Right now! Take each other to the mat when we get home if you want to get it out of your system. Not one more word before that.”

Steve’s threats don’t have any teeth in them. He can’t court martial them. He can’t replace them, any of them. But they all listen. They circle each other like spitting cats but they do it silently.

Clint takes Natasha by the arm and pilots her into a corner. Their hissed conversation has more tone than volume. Steve is guiltily grateful to Clint.

It wouldn’t have been right coming from Steve. Five words in and she would already be thinking, even if she didn’t say it, that Steve was defending Bucky’s anger against her decisions because his love surpasses his rationality. Clint’s judgment, she trusts.

Steve faces Bucky.

“You weren’t even going to say you got hit?”

Bucky says nothing. He’s said his piece. And he’s wavering on the edge of that stillness. Whether because of pain or anger, Steve doesn’t know. Because he shows neither.

“Talk to the medic,” Steve says.

Bucky turns away, and the agent opens his case and pulls out rolls and pads of cotton. Bucky takes off his jacket. Steve sits at the far end of the plane.

Natasha breaks away from Clint. She smooths her hair and approaches the medic, and stands just outside Bucky’s reach.

“I didn’t make the best call,” she says.

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a moment. Steve can feel the branching futures spreading out from Bucky’s response and there’s nothing he can do to push one way or the other. He unconsciously reaches over his shoulder for the shield.

“If you’ll remember you said that, then I’ll forget all about it,” Bucky says.

Which was the right thing to say. Steve leaves the shield in its harness.

“Done,” Natasha says.

She walks off to a seat between Sam and Clint. The medic lets Bucky go with bandages wrapped around his upper arm. Bucky sits down heavily next to Steve, slouches down in the seat, and clicks his teeth when he opens his mouth.

“Well that went well,” he says sarcastically.

“Yep,” Steve says.


	19. Chapter 19

Steve pulls off his gloves and drops them with the boots. He climbs into street clothes and stores the uniform with the shield. The Avengers locker room inside the Tower is bigger than the Army’s, or a school’s, and cleaner. But it’s the same essentially. There are only so many ways to modify a space for humans to change clothes.

The electronic lock and heavy clunk of shooting bolts protecting his uniform is one. But it’s a small one.

Natasha and Sam kept a distance from Bucky on the flight home less out of deference to Bucky and more out of deference to Steve. If any of them had anything else snappy to say they kept it to themselves, and they scattered when the plane touched down. Sam left quickly back to his life. Natasha took one of Tony’s offices in the Tower to coordinate with Jarvis.

And Tony lead Bucky down to the basement. Of all people, Steve didn’t expect he could count on Tony. Sometimes you never can tell. He’s not sure if it’s better if Tony sees Bucky as a project instead of a problem. It’s probably better.

The SHIELD agents putter around the upper floor waiting to escort Bucky back to New Jersey. They eyeball Tony’s artwork and speculate to each other about what’s behind the doors they can’t open. They won’t be buying their own drinks among their coworkers for a while, coming back with stories that will pay for them.

Steve drifts away from the agents into the Avengers empty meeting room, and over to the windows giving a panoramic view of the city. It’s the middle of the night but the darkness just makes it more obvious how little the city slows down. From this height the islands are digital anthills, all the moving lights people living, spreading out even onto the ocean in the lights on buoys and boats. 

He understands why New York makes other people feel so small, people who aren’t used to the size and motion of it. He supposes if you were always an ant, it’s not so bad. The lights are as natural as the stars in the sky. He belongs in the chaos of it. And the Tower has a breathtaking view.

He notices the texture of the silence behind him has changed. Bucky stands motionless in the doorway, in a clean t-shirt and clean bandages and out of all of the weaponry, watching him. Steve doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there.

“Stark have anything you can use?” Steve asks to break the silence.

“Maybe.”

Bucky isn’t helping. Steve has to remind himself that even Bucky must be able to stand still without it meaning impending danger. It takes a lot of reminding.

“Wasn’t expecting it to go like that out there,” Steve says.

“Neither was I.”

“Never thought I’d say the war was easier.”

“In some ways.”

One sided conversation ends quickly. Steve wishes the windows weren’t soundproofed, or that they weren’t so high up, that at least the sounds of the city could filter in and take the edge off. Bucky isn’t holding up his end and he isn’t moving. And he’s blocking the only exit from the room.

“Is there something you need?” Steve says.

“No.”

Steve draws in a shaky breath.

“Something you want?”

Bucky wrests his gaze from Steve and takes it around the room. He doesn’t look impressed, but he doesn’t look like anything else either.

"Stark have surveillance up?" Bucky asks.

"No, I think it would cramp his style at parties."

Bucky leaves the doorway and crosses the room toward Steve. His boots thud on the carpet. He stands at the window, and closer to Steve can see the other half of the conversation hidden in tiny movements on his face. Reading him isn’t impossible. Just incredibly difficult. The effort of trying makes Steve feel very old, and very tired.

“Cards on the table?” Bucky says.

Steve nods slowly.

“I didn’t remember about the lemon trees,” Bucky says. “Don’t think I ever noticed them.”

Steve has vague recollections of the ice after the crash, the cold working its way into his blood and filling his lungs with every breath. Perception narrowing and darkening and eventually ceasing.

“I had to remember the hotel was in Paris. Then I knew what you meant.”

Steve hears him say it. Far away through black terror.

“I can’t remember… everything, and, there’s a lot of it I wish I didn’t. But…”

Bucky reaches out and gingerly takes Steve’s hand.

“I know this doesn’t belong to you.”

Steve looks down at his own left hand, draped in Bucky’s right. He sees the ring shining newly polished on his third finger. It doesn’t surprise him to see it. He feels like it should.

“I lost yours in the snow,” Bucky says.

Steve pulls his hand out of Bucky’s loose grip.

“I know.”

Bucky’s right hand closes on itself and drops. He holds out his left and curls the fingers, beckoning. Steve does not want to hear the sound when the brass clinks on his steel palm. But he hands the ring over. It doesn’t belong to him.

“You could’ve gotten rid of it,” Bucky says.

No, he couldn’t have.

“It doesn’t take up much space,” Steve says.

The ring rattles in Bucky’s hand to the ends of his fingers. Steve cringes. Bucky balances the ring between his thumb and first finger and holds it up, looking at it. Steve hears the machinery in his arm whine, sees or thinks he sees Bucky’s fingers flex tighter, and his heart skips, knowing the damage he can do to such a small piece of brass.

“Don’t…” Steve says. “If you don’t want to keep it that’s fine but… Don’t…”

Bucky’s jaw drops open in hurt surprise. Steve knows he was wrong. Too late for it to matter.

“How could you think I would…” Bucky says.

Understanding touches his eyes. The surprise drains away to resignation.

“Ah.”

Steve’s mistake costs him the warmth that made Bucky reach for his hand. Bucky tips the ring over the end of his first finger and it sticks at the joint in the metal that would’ve been his second knuckle. He might have just been fussing with it. He might have done it to be hurtful. It does hurt.

“You had this on you and didn’t think to give it back to me?” Bucky says.

“Wouldn’t have been right if you didn’t remember.”

“Wasn’t right to hide it if you thought I didn’t.”

“Didn’t see it that way.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

Steve doesn’t have the energy to hold back the flare of anger. He did the best he could. He couldn’t have prepared for that no win scenario.

“Do you remember when you showed up?” Steve says. “Because I sure as hell do! I had no idea if you even knew who I was!”

“You looked in a mirror lately?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing…”

Bucky yields, shakes his head once to let go whatever point he was trying to make. He collects himself and blinks hard, tries to look up at Steve, and shies away.

“Steve… I know… Whatever else happened, and I can’t ever make that right… I know I loved you. I always…”

“Stop,” Steve says.

Not always. Couldn’t have been always. Not on the highway or the helicarrier, not in the alley or on the floor of his apartment. Not always. Steve can’t hear always.

Bucky stops. He nods, and bites the inside of his lip. He unbinds the ring from where it stuck on his finger and slips it into his pocket.

“Doesn’t take up much space,” he says mildly.

Steve doesn’t have the right to stop him and take the ring back. It takes all of his will not to do it anyway.

“They want me back on base,” Bucky says.

Steve has no response. There’s no room in him for SHIELD. Bucky waits for a beat before he’s sure Steve isn’t going to say anything else, isn’t even going to say goodbye, before he turns aside.

“Goodnight Steve.”

Steve doesn’t watch him leave. He can hear his boots cross the room and turn the corner and move down the hallway, not pausing or turning back. Steve closes his hands into tight fists and drives his fingernails into his palms. He stares blindly out the window over the city, forcing himself to breathe and wishing he didn’t have to.

He catches his own eyes in the reflection in the glass. Lines of rage are etched between his brows. And his wide silhouette is alone in the empty room. He wants to drive a fist through the reflection, and he sees the lines dig deeper, and he aches to feel the glass break.

“Hey Steve?”

Natasha’s voice. Soft and curious. Steve’s reflection flattens out. When he turns around Natasha leans her shoulder on the doorframe and creates a posture that is transparently inviting. Maybe false and constructed, but blatantly so.

“I was just heading out. Want a ride?” she says.

Steve knows he could. Get into her car and get her into his apartment with a suggestion of the schnapps. Have a drink, or maybe more than one, or maybe skip the pretense entirely and take her directly to his bed and pretend in a way that alcohol won’t let him. He wouldn’t hurt her. They would be enough for each other for one night. She wouldn’t stay after. She wouldn’t mention it happened at all. And she’d be willing to do it again.

“No,” Steve says. “Thanks. I’ll make my own way.”

If she’s disappointed, he can’t see it.

“Okay. Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah.”

Natasha walks away. Steve leaves the reflection behind him and goes back to the locker room and opens the storage holding the shield. He drags a table over to the wall and props the shield up against it, and slams his fists into the shield until his knuckles are bloodied and the concrete wall behind it sends out spidering cracks and showers of sand.


	20. Chapter 20

Days blur.

Steve shouldn’t ignore his phone, but he does, unless it’s Natasha, and she’s talking business.

Missions blur.

This base and that, these Hydra soldiers and those, gunshots and explosions.

Maria Hill attends their briefings and agents escort Bucky Barnes to and from the Tower. Eventually she only sends the agents on the plane with him if the Avengers say they could use the manpower. He’s proven he won’t bolt.

“We’re alright here,” he says, once, to Steve, and he doesn’t say anything else but acknowledging orders.

Natasha gives more of them, and Steve lets her. She gives Bucky the orders Steve would give and treats him with the dryness of a stranger, which might be better than the animosity of an enemy. It feels like an unsteady truce and Steve’s silence maintains it.

Sam sends barbs at Bucky that he hasn’t quite earned the right for yet. But Bucky lets them stick and doesn’t return them. Sam seems more puzzled than anything by that.

When Steve lets himself think about it he hopes Clint is still talking to Bucky in his off time. He doesn’t let himself think about it much.

The sound of Bucky’s mechanical joints might have gotten quieter. He might be spending more time with Tony. Steve would have to pay attention to really tell. He won’t. Steve leaves the Tower as soon as his shoes are tied.

Between missions in the war they had both been antsy waiting for the end of the briefings and plotting routes between the officers and the tents to a corner out of earshot to have a smoke. Maybe they were secretive enough or maybe Captain America’s celebrity protected them, they never knew. They spent a beautiful and terrible year together in danger, standing too close and sharing cigarettes and whispering the word “husband” for the shivers and tears it brought and dreaming about what might come after if the war ever ended.

Bucky stands stock still in the Tower during briefings, a barely present shadow. Neither of them are plotting. Steve doesn’t know how long they’ll spend like this. He screws himself down tight for it.

For the first time in his life, a span of time he was awake for slips out of his memory. Natasha and Jarvis are keeping track of their progress. And there’s nothing else in his days worth remembering.


	21. Chapter 21

Steve steps off the elevator at the top floor of the Tower. Through the glass doors of the meeting room he can see Tony and Natasha already talking over Jarvis’ display, Maria Hill and Bucky Barnes sitting at the table with Clint and SHIELD’s agents. Bucky lazily tips his office chair and spins it back and forth with the toe of one boot on the floor. Clint makes an excited comment Steve can’t hear and Bucky responds with a proud smile. Steve pulls his shoulders back and starts across the hall.

Sam stands away from the wall beside the elevator and moves into Steve’s path, and gives him a quick once over he clearly doesn’t like the look of.

“Long night?” Sam asks.

“I guess,” Steve says, without breaking his stride.

Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“All due respect, Captain? I’m gonna need you to pull your head out of your ass.”

“Not right now Sam,” Steve says, and shrugs Sam’s hand off.

Sam jabs one finger in the middle of Steve’s chest.

“No it would’ve been better months ago but I’ll settle for right now. You know Natasha’s leading this team more than you?”

Steve brushes Sam’s hand aside.

“She’s got the intel. She’s calling the shots.”

“Til we get on the plane. But you need to pick up the reins when we’re moving in.”

“We’re doing alright.”

“You’re not. We can spare one more gun on the ground if he’s gonna fuck you up this bad.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re full of shit. Bury the hatchet with Barnes or tell Maria Hill to leave him at home the next time she comes to visit.”

Sam moves off and through the door. Steve catches it before it closes. Sam gives him one last dark look before he sits down.

“Good news,” Natasha says, motioning at Bucky. “Your ruse worked. Hydra noticed you and they’re panicking.”

“Glad to hear it,” Bucky says.

“Strucker is moving. We still don’t have his location but they’re fetching Rumlow to cover him. According to the report from the Canadian government’s interrogations Rumlow hasn’t even left the states. He’s in Arizona.”

“Great,” Clint says. “It’ll be a quick trip.”

“We want to apprehend him and the transport team,” Hill says. “Someone is going to know where Strucker is and where he’s headed.”

“We?” Tony says. “Are you gracing us with your presence on this trip?”

“I think I’d like to have a conversation with Brock Rumlow myself, if that’s alright with you.”

“That’s just fine,” Steve says. Listening heads swing in his direction. “You worked with him longer than any of us. If we get lucky he’s still scared of you.”

“If he’s smart he is,” Hill says.

“You can have him,” Sam says. “I’m not looking forward to seeing that guy again.”

“You and me both,” Bucky says.

Sam looks at Bucky curiously.

“I thought Rumlow was… Wasn’t he working with you? Or, sorry, the Winter Soldier? In D.C.?”

“Yeah. He wasn’t happy about it. Got resentful that Pierce thought he couldn’t do the job himself.”

“Not a team player?” Clint says.

Bucky’s chair stops turning, and he takes a moment too long to respond, calculating words.

“Maybe he put the boot in once or twice,” Bucky says, “in between times when I was useful.”

Acid boils in Steve’s stomach. Rumlow tried to kill Steve after the fight on the highway but that suddenly pales in comparison. His last few weeks strike him as incredibly selfish.

“There gonna be a problem here?” Hill says.

“No ma’am,” Bucky says. “I don’t hold grudges. They get heavy quick and I’ve only got the two arms.”

Sam scoffs. “I think you could manage.”

Bucky swings his chair around to face Sam, and glances across Steve on the way. Steve thinks he’s checking in on backup.

“You wanna see me try?” Bucky says, and steeples his fingers in front of his face, and glares mischievously through them at Sam.

Sam laughs. “No I do not.”

Bucky nods and parts his hands and rests his gaze on Steve again. He’s showing off and proving a point. Steve nods back. Point taken.

“They’re keeping Rumlow in one of our decommissioned medical facilities,” Hill says. “Hydra went in and turned the lights back on but they haven’t had time to fortify it much.”

“Any chance you know about any secret back entrances?” Clint says.

“Not on our blueprints,” Hill says. “What you see is what you get.”

Natasha lifts her head, lifts herself in her chair as if she’s about to speak, but she leaves space in it. Steve finds the levers on power in his mind and pulls them. He hasn’t slipped too far. He needs to thank Sam for the reminder nonetheless.

“Alright,” Steve says. “Slow and steady. We’re not bringing the walls down on top of people. We need them. Tony, dial it back for this one.”

“If you insist,” Tony says without looking around.

Steve takes a slow breath. Natasha doesn’t jump in.

“Bucky, I appreciate that you’re not holding a grudge, but if you think Rumlow might be then stay out of his way. We’re trying not to kill him but he won’t be trying not to kill us.”

Bucky arches an eyebrow. Then drops it, and taps it with two fingers, the closest he ever got to saluting Steve.

“Will do,” he says.

Steve stands, and the assembled stand with him. It feels as it should be.

“Suit up,” Steve says.

The flight is unsettlingly brief for what they’ve become accustomed to. They have time to review Jarvis’ preparatory holograms and arm themselves before the plane touches down on rocky terrain. Red desert baked under the sun spreads out around them, interrupted by fences topped with barbed wire and the low cinderblock buildings they protect.

Tony and Sam focus fire on the Hydra quinjets parked outside the fence. With no escape the soldiers simply fight. Their cover inside the darkened buildings is infuriatingly good. Clint’s aim and Bucky’s is still better. Fighting from building to building is a hassle. Unconscious Hydra block doorways.

One wall explodes outwards and concrete hail pelts down on them. A fully armored figure, face completely concealed by a mask painted over with a white skull, stomps out of the building with a fist raised.

“Captain America!” the figure shouts. “I was _hoping_ I’d see you again!” 

He draws back his arm and throws a handful of metal spewing smoke.

“Rumlow!” Steve says, and bashes the explosive aside with the shield. It goes off in a fireball in the air over the fence.

Natasha appears around a corner and punches into Rumlow’s neck, arcs of electricity jumping from her hand. Rumlow jolts, then spins and grabs Natasha around the waist, throwing her to the ground.

“I don’t work like that no more!” Rumlow yells.

Natasha kicks up and dodges away from two other guards. Rumlow throws another of his grenades into Lincoln’s line and they try to duck. The concussion knocks them back and flames lick at their uniforms but Steve sees them all stand.

Bullets scream past Steve. He raises the shield and redirects their fire harmlessly to the side. He has to ignore muscle memory instructing him to send the bullets back to their owners. Sam banks over him and with SHIELD’s rounds in his guns puts them out.

“Oh!” Rumlow says behind him. “It’s _you_!”

The crack of Bucky’s rifle stops. Steve whirls around and Rumlow advances on Bucky’s position. Bucky fires the rifle point blank into Rumlow’s chest. His armor turns the round aside.

“What else have you got?” he snarls.

Rumlow reaches down to his belt. Steve starts running. 

Where SHIELD’s icer round did no good, Bucky’s left fist rising at the end of his arm in a long arc from his crouch knocks Rumlow off his feet. Bucky stands over where Rumlow lies on the ground. He backhands Rumlow across the face, splitting his mask. Steve accelerates. He’s not thinking and he’s not sure if he can make that distance before someone dies and he doesn’t shout, using all of his breath to run.

Bucky kicks Rumlow over onto his face. He holds him down with one foot in the middle of his back and snatches a pair of cuffs from Lincoln’s belt. He drops to his knee in Rumlow’s back and drags his hands together, snaps the cuffs on, and stands away.

“All yours,” he says to Lincoln, and swings his rifle back up into his hands. 

He ducks behind a broken wall and takes aim on Hydra’s reenforcements. Steve drops down alongside him. Lincoln and two other agents haul Rumlow away, snarling and cursing.

“I hate that guy,” Bucky mutters.

But he’s still breathing, Steve thinks.

“I really need to start listening to you,” Steve says aloud what he meant to think to himself.

Bucky fires, and chambers another round.

“No kidding,” he says. “Get away from me, you break my concentration.”

And he means it, but he doesn’t say it viciously. Steve nods, and takes off behind the shield.

Hydra’s soldiers watch Rumlow carted off. In any reasonable world, with any reasonable enemy, the rest of them would just surrender. Hydra is not reasonable. They expect to die and will be disappointed when they wake up after SHIELD’s rounds wear off with that one fancy tooth carefully removed. They learned all the wrong lessons from Zola. Never figured out how to survive to fight another day.

The Avengers don’t give them a choice. The dust settles on the wind and the unconscious survivors are gathered together in one intact building. Steve stands at the door and Sam lands at his side, folding his wings and keeping his hands on his pistols. Hill passes them, sneering at Rumlow. Bucky pauses at the door and hugs close to Steve’s shoulder.

“Rumlow?” Hill says. “Fancy meeting you here. How have you been?”

“You’re working with _him_?” Rumlow says, jerking his chin out at Bucky. “What’re you gonna do, sic him on me to make me talk? Do it! Sic the lap dog on me!”

“Shut up,” Steve says.

“Make him sit up and beg!” Rumlow shouts. “That’s always good for a laugh! Make him beg for Captain America!”

Bucky blinks slowly. And turns away.

“Somebody shut him up!” Steve yells into the agents. Steve only has one way of doing it himself.

The SHIELD medic pulls a syringe out of his case. Two others hold Rumlow still enough for the medic to inject it into his neck, and until his eyes close and he goes slack on the floor.

"Don't look at me like that Wilson," Bucky says, and brushes past them.

Steve narrows his eyes at Sam. He’s watching Bucky walk away, and looking back to Rumlow, compassionately appalled.

A completely matte black, enormous and foreign jet crests the ridge and lands on the other side of the compound. Hill raises a hand over her head and makes a tight circle, and the SHIELD agents form up on her, carrying hostages.

“What the hell is that?” Steve says.

“Backup,” Hill says. “We’ll take it from here. Agent Cavanaugh will meet you at the Tower for Barnes.”

Steve sighs. He thinks Rumlow is probably safer that way, and the information they need better gotten. He just doesn’t particularly care, right at the moment.

“Understood,” Steve says. He taps his com, and relays the situation, and leads the Avengers back to their own unique transportation.

“Damn…” Sam says on the short walk back. “I knew, that he wasn’t… You know, that he didn’t work with Hydra because he wanted to. But I didn't think about it like that.”

“Yeah…” Steve says.

On the plane Bucky stows his weaponry immediately and takes the seat in the nearest corner to the cockpit. No one has to walk past him, getting themselves settled for takeoff. Steve chooses to, standing at his knees and speaking quietly.

“Buck…”

“Not right now Steve,” he says.

Steve nods.

“Alright,” he says, and sits on the other side of the plane.


	22. Chapter 22

Maria Hill patches the Avengers in to her interrogation. They watch it pacing around the conference table in the Tower, and for once Steve is relieved that he has no idea where SHIELD is operating from. All the screen shows is a nondescript plaster room with no windows. Fury’s secrets keep Rumlow alive. 

Bucky stands away from them with his back dug into the corner of the room, arms folded tight, staring stoic at the screen. The rest leave him be. 

Rumlow struggles in restraints behind a metal table and Maria Hill stands primly on the other side, watching her medic preparing a layout of syringes. He injects one of them into Rumlow’s neck, and Rumlow lunges at him, stopped by chains. Steve grits his teeth. A brutal smile would be inappropriate on Captain America.

“What do you want?” Rumlow growls.

“Strucker,” Hill replies.

“I want immunity.”

Hill shakes her head derisively.

“There’s no charges being filed. No one even knows you’re here. You’d be lucky if we filed charges. Then you’d be entitled to protection.”

She inclines her head to the medic. He comes at Rumlow again with a smaller syringe. Rumlow’s struggles have already lessened.

“So,” Hill says. “Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. Where is he?”

“What the hell do you want him for? You want your own enhanced army?”

“We just want his location,” Hill says. “And you’re going to give it to us.”

“SHIELD never had a truth serum.”

“No. Hydra never had a truth serum. You’ve got about - ” She exaggerates looking at her watch. “ - ninety seconds to keep being an asshole. Anything else to say?”

“I didn’t give a shit about their new world order,” Rumlow says. “They were paying me. What’re you paying in?”

Hill slams her hands on the table.

“Breaths you son of a bitch!”

Rumlow groans, and doubles over.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Hill says. “We have some things that are more interesting than a truth serum. You probably want me to tell you it won’t do any lasting damage. Truth is, I have no idea. Hydra may have developed this one. But I do know that we still have a lot of it.”

She watches Rumlow writhe in pain for a moment. Steve doesn’t. He risks a glance at Bucky, but it doesn’t give him anything new. Bucky’s eyes are glued to the screen, and his face is blank besides.

“Strucker,” Hill says. “We know you were going to meet him. Where?”

Rumlow’s head lolls. He pants hard, and sweat beads on his face.

“Are you gonna kill me?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Strucker.”

“Are you gonna send me back to them?”

“Maybe. Then you’ll wish I’d killed you. Strucker.”

Rumlow’s breath rattles.

“Sokovia. Base in… an old railroad depot. I don’t know where he was going!”

“We’ll check that out,” Hill says.

“I have checked that out,” Jarvis says from the walls. “The location of a railyard in Sokovia is mentioned in Hydra’s communications routed through Latvia. I have the coordinates.”

Bucky nods definitively and leaves the room. Steve waves his hand at Tony to cut SHIELD’s feed.

“Get it together as soon as we can,” he says.

“Can’t we have a sandwich and a nap before we get back on the plane?” Clint says.

“Strucker still has Loki’s staff,” Tony says. “I want to at least try to contact the pretty alien prince before we move in.”

“Do it,” Steve says. “But if Thor doesn’t respond in twenty-four hours we’re going without him.”

“Banner is at a conference in London but he’ll drop it for this,” Natasha says.

“Good. We’ll get the whole band back together. Twenty-four hours, right here, and whoever is coming is coming.”

“You got it Cap,” Sam says.

They disperse, to work and conversations or food and sleep. Steve wanders the upper floor looking for Bucky.

He finds him outside on the balcony, around a corner from the windows and glass doors and the warm light spilling out of them. His hands are clenched around the railing and his head hangs over the edge. The moon above casts his face in shadow.

“How are you doing?” Steve asks.

“How do you think?” Bucky snaps.

“Yeah that was a stupid question…”

Wind frays Bucky’s hair and whips it into his eyes, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.

“It wasn’t just Rumlow,” Bucky says. “He was the last, not the first.”

“You don’t have to say.”

Bucky’s hunched shoulders draw up tight. The sound of tortured metal squeals up from the railing. It indents under Bucky’s mechanical fingers.

“Yes, Steve, they used you against me. When I could remember. They wouldn’t even let me have you…”

In the way that a vague smudge of cloud can suddenly coalesce into the shape of a face, Steve sees Bucky’s indifference and stillness for the camouflage it is. He finds sadness in the place of fear.

Bucky misreads his expression and bares his teeth.

"Don't you pity me. Don't you fucking dare."

Steve holds up his hands.

“I don’t. I won’t.”

He steps over to the railing. The drop down the side of the Tower is longer by far than the drop out of the helicarrier and asphalt would meet him instead of the river. Bucky’s anger in Steve’s apartment had been chaotic but his justified rage is focused and the reason clear in his eyes. Steve stands at the edge, at Bucky’s tense shoulder and whirring machinery, without trepidation.

“Can I apologize?” Steve says. “I’ve been doing this all wrong.”

“Y’think?”

“I thought I had it bad.”

Anger flares in Bucky’s eyes. Steve raises his hands again.

“No, this isn’t about feeling sorry for you, it’s just… I’m trying to pull my head out of my ass.”

Bucky lets go of the railing and faces him.

“This oughta be entertaining,” he grumbles.

“Yeah I deserved that… But, you don’t deserve this. And you’ve done so much since you came back… I’m sorry. I should’ve done better by you.”

Bucky examines him critically, and Steve puts aside any skill he’s picked up hiding his own thoughts. He feels his shame and lets it show, feels his anticipation and lets it show. The edges of Bucky’s anger soften.

“You said it,” Bucky says. “Not me.”

Steve lays his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. The line between muscle and machine splits his palm but he resists his aversion to it. Bucky doesn’t back out of his touch.

“I will do better,” Steve says. “If you’ll let me.”

Bucky’s shoulder rises with a trembling breath. He lifts his left arm around Steve’s back. Steve can barely suppress a shudder, but that he will hide, is determined to hide. Bucky sees anyway and starts to draw his arm back and Steve's instincts shout from dark corners.

_Lie._

“It’s fine,” Steve says.

_Lie better!_

“It’s just cold.”

He pulls lightly on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky gets his message and bends into him, wraps both arms around him tight. His left elbow digs uncomfortably into Steve’s side. Steve ignores it.

“I hate that guy,” Bucky mumbles.

Steve nods. “Me too.”

Bucky buries his face in Steve’s neck and struggles to control the tremor in his breath. Steve holds him as long as he wants to be held, making no effort to break his embrace. The Tower sways minutely in the wind, and Steve plants his feet.

After a moment Bucky stands back out of his arms. He sniffs and rubs across his nose, and moves his eyes fast banishing tears.

“I could really use a cigarette,” he says, and his voice is thick.

Steve pulls the pack out of his pocket.

“I do owe you a few,” he says, and shakes out two.

Bucky takes one, and lets Steve hold the lighter, and shields the flame with his hand from the wind. The ember glows and Bucky fills his lungs, tips his head back and exhales a long stream of smoke into the moonlight.

“Sweet Jesus…” Bucky says. “That is too good.”

“For how bad it is, you’re right.”

“I guess we don’t get to be role models for the kiddies.”

Steve smiles and props his cigarette between his lips.

“Sure,” he says indistinctly around it. “ _This_ is why.”

Bucky chuckles. Steve’s lighter snaps. And for a while there’s no other sound but the wind and the crackle of ash.

Bucky turns into the wind and pulls the elastic out of his hair, rearranges it and ties it back again. Steve swallows. It’s different but it suits him. Quite well. And the moonlight slanting through his eyes lights them from within. 

Steve draws hard and often on his cigarette and it burns down quick. His is at the filter before Bucky’s is half gone. Bucky savors. Steve can’t imagine Hydra would’ve let him have the small comforts but he lets that thought go. He has them now. 

Steve drops the butt and toes it out and kicks it over the edge. Bucky tsks.

“Littering. That’s a crime, you know.”

“If anybody can catch me I’ll pay the fine.”

Steve lights another. Bucky smiles taunting and taps ash out on the railing.

“You still smoke like you hate the things," he says.

Bucky’s lips form softly around the filter. Watching his chest slowly rise and his eyes dim in enjoyment makes Steve shiver.

“You still smoke like you’re trying to get them off," Steve says.

Bucky chokes on his inhale and coughs. Smoke sprays in a haphazard halo around his face. His coughing morphs into laughter, deep and loud, with his face wide open and eyes half closed. And his laughter hits Steve full force in the chest with the power of years spent without it.

“I could use the practice!” Bucky sputters. “Hate you to think I’d lost my touch!”

Steve goes rigid and crushes the cigarette between his fingers. It is entirely his fault for starting the joke but it’s still a surprise to hear Bucky run that way with it. God his touch was so good. Steve can feel heat gathering on his face. He drops the cigarette without putting it out. 

Bucky’s laughter subsides and he leans on the railing, so close he must be able to feel Steve’s skin burning. He hovers in Steve’s face, tension and potential in bright and shining eyes.

“Steve…”

Steve’s heart leaps up and threatens to choke him too. His name on Bucky’s breath is a plain request Steve has no idea how to answer. He hesitates and Bucky sighs.

“Steve, I want you so bad I can taste it. But you freeze solid every time I look at you. What I want doesn't factor.”

Bucky stubs out his cigarette on the railing and flicks it into the wind. Steve can’t find any pithy comments to make about littering. He’s preoccupied with his hammering heartbeat and trying to think through it, fast. What Bucky wants absolutely does factor.

Bucky smiles ruefully at him.

“Thanks for the smoke,” he says, and turns away from the balcony. 

Steve’s arm follows commands issued from an authority much higher than his mind and reaches out for him. His hand connects with Bucky’s waist and Bucky stops on it. His soft cotton shirt slides under Steve’s hand warm from touching him. And even if Steve wanted to wreck everything and let him go he can’t, he can’t do it anymore. He knows his eyes would betray the lie if he tried, that they are as blown out as Bucky’s because looking at him in gleaming moonlight he’s _stunning_ and Steve _wants_ and he’s had _enough_.

“Just kiss me,” Steve says.

Bucky doesn’t hesitate. But he moves forward cautiously and Steve has to step into him to bring their lips together. They meet closed, and both bodies are held taut, and for a ringing moment they are too slow of it and too weak of it, each giving the other too much leash and not enough pull and Steve isn’t sure if it’s a return or a failed attempt.

But when their lips part their mouths open slightly to take a breath they feel mingle in the air between them, and they move back together to capture it. The tips of their tongues slip through their lips and Steve’s hand at Bucky’s waist grasps him closer. Their mouths meld open and bodies form against each other, and the breath they release into the wind is a sigh of pleasure and relief.

Bucky’s tongue exploring his mouth elicits small moans Steve can’t and won’t hide. He starts to try to remember, kissing Bucky deeply and clutching at his shape, if Bucky's shoulders were always so firm, if his waist has narrowed in his absence, and then stops trying when he stops caring because the man in his arms now feels incredible and he doesn't want to leave him for his own past.

Bucky’s hands slip under Steve’s shirt and the contact with bare skin makes Steve feel like he has fallen off the edge of the Tower, plummeted into light. It takes him a moment to register why some of his touch is painful when some of it is wonderful, the feel of one palm frantic desire for connection and the other sharp and absent pressure. 

He remembers and resists, fighting through fog. He takes long kisses between gasped breaths and presses forward into Bucky’s warmth, desperately chasing sweetness he knows is there and tastes, again and again. He sways against Bucky’s chest and the gorgeous comforting breadth of him.

But when Bucky splays his fingers across Steve’s ribs Steve can feel the bone give more than the fingers and he grabs for Bucky’s arm, pushing his hand away. He regrets the hasty impulse immediately, when Bucky pulls back and meets his eyes, and he has to watch disillusionment pass over Bucky’s features.

“Maybe not…” Bucky says.

“Maybe not tonight…” Steve says quickly.

“Yeah, just, not tonight…”

"Maybe, when we’re not on Tony’s balcony…"

Steve doesn’t think Bucky believes that, but he doesn’t challenge it. He nods, and clears his throat.

“Funny thing, but I had, um… I had completely forgotten where we were.”

“Yeah…”

“So, maybe some other…”

“Yeah, just…”

“Just not tonight…"

"Okay…”

“Okay.”

“Alright.”

Bucky hooks his thumb over his shoulder.

“So, I’m gonna…”

“Yeah, you’d better… Yeah, give my best to Cavanaugh.”

Bucky smiles cannily at him, and runs his tongue over his lips.

“If it’s all the same to you I think I’ll keep your best,” he says. “But I’ll tell him you said hello.”

The smiles that creeps over Steve’s face feels so good he wants to scream. And he knows that they meant only and exactly what they said, that not tonight means only and exactly that and does not mean never. The knowledge is exhilarating.

Bucky clears his throat again, and drags his right hand down the back of his neck, and looks at Steve with sheepish hope.

"Can I kiss you goodnight?" he asks.

There is not enough yes in the whole world to answer that question, but it’s all Steve has got.

"Yes."

Bucky leans in and brushes their lips together, just long enough to feel their warmth, with his hands at his sides. Steve isn't sure if he wants Bucky to try again, to press for more, tonight, but he doesn't. 

"Goodnight," Bucky says.

"Goodnight Buck."

Bucky bites his bottom lip, and a grin takes over his face. He sucks in a deep breath and huffs it out, centering himself, and steps away. Before he turns the corner he looks back over his shoulder and his smile somehow broadens, and it conquers Steve too.

Bucky disappears into the Tower and Steve’s legs betray him. He leans back against the wall, and breathes the moonlight in. He sinks down the wall to sit on the floor, and sees the crushed cigarette he dropped still smoldering tossed off the edge by the wind. 

And he starts to laugh. He laughs until tears stream down his face and the city below muddles in a rainbow mess. Then he sobs grinning ear to ear, the smile stretched painfully on his cheeks. And there is more life in his raw throat than he has had in nearly a century.

When he catches his breath he gets up and washes his face in Tony’s sink. When he sees his own preposterous face red and puffed up in the mirror, he starts laughing again.

It takes him some time to get himself home. He doesn’t mind.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! This story arguably caught up to canon, the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron. And I decided to use (some of) the existing canon scenes and lines and graft the events of this story on to that movie.
> 
> Because I thought it would be fun, that’s why.
> 
> It was!

When Steve arrives at the Tower the next day Bucky is already there, talking with Tony across equipment and technical readouts on a tablet. Clint and Sam feign inattention but occasionally look away from their conversation to watch the beeping and flashing lights.

Bucky shucks out of his jacket and the left sleeve of the shirt underneath has been removed and finished with tidy stitches. Bucky was always good with his hands. When he had the time.

He notices Steve and his lips twitch up at the corners. Steve feels his cheeks color. Bucky’s happiness, however subtle, is infectious. Somehow he manages not to burst into laughter again.

The sound when Bucky lifts the machinery in front of Tony’s tablet is definitely lessened. Steve can’t see a difference and assumes any modifications were internal. Then he rotates his arm outward and Steve sees one difference. The red star on his bicep is gone.

“Alright Barnes, final check,” Tony says. “You good to go?”

Bucky nods.

“Hit it.”

“Bringing the network online.”

A faint glow rises from between the plates of Bucky’s arm and it trills new sounds. Bucky squints and flexes it along every axis.

“How’s that feel?” Tony asks.

“Fucking weird. But I think I’ve got it.”

Bucky flicks his hand and shimmering readouts appear over his forearm. Steve has only gotten glimpses of the HUD of Tony’s suit but he spots the similarities. The glow throughout Bucky’s arm goes out but the display remains floating above it.

Sam walks up alongside Steve and tilts his head, giving some fleeting interest to the mechanical marvel.

“That’ll be handy,” Sam says.

Steve elbows him.

“No pun intended,” Sam says.

“Alright, the connection is solid,” Tony says. “You’ve got all our mission data and when we get back I’ll explain wi-fi to you.”

“I know what wi-fi is,” Bucky says.

He taps his wrist and the display changes, between maps and video. Tony sets the tablet down and smacks the side of a robotic contraption that begins packing away the equipment.

“Now you’re sure you don’t want a repulsor?” Tony says.

“I’m sure I don’t want to blow my own face off scratching my nose,” Bucky says, closing his hand on the holograms and shutting them off.

“Might be an improvement,” Sam says.

Steve elbows him again. Bucky turns to Sam, and to Steve’s delight he looks impressed.

“Wilson has jokes,” Bucky says. “Alright. Noted.”

“Hey we’re not even yet,” Sam says.

“Use this time wisely,” Bucky says, and waggles a completely unthreatening finger. “My time will come.”

Radiant colored light pours from the sky onto the platform outside, and a booming rush felt as much as heard accompanies it. When it fades, the caped and armored figure of Thor stands up from a crouch, tossing his hammer into the air and catching it by the handle.

“Friends!” he bellows. “At long last we rejoin for battle!”

He holds his arms out and electricity crackles down his hair and out to the tips of his fingers. Mjolnir flies up apparently on its own to spin in the air and fall precisely back to Thor’s hand.

“Holy shit…” Bucky mutters.

“Uh huh…” Sam replies.

“Hail hail the gang’s all here,” Tony says. “Banner and Romanov are having a tête-à-tête on the plane so let’s go interrupt them.”

“New friends!” Thor says, and claps Sam and Bucky one on each shoulder. They stumble a step forward. “The allies of Captain Rogers are most welcome on our journey!”

“Thanks…” Sam says.

“Yeah, right…” Bucky says.

Bucky makes apprehensive eye contact with Steve and mouths “What the fuck?” so distinctly Steve can hear it. Steve grins.

“Friends,” he says.

Thor favors them on the flight with tales of Loki’s exploits that are so fabulous Steve thinks they must be repackaged fables. Thor soaks up Sam and Bucky’s reactions, the only two he can still shock simply by being, feeding his ego into the stories. The rest have learned when to ignore him.

Clint argues with him. “None of that ever happened!”

“It surely did!” Thor says. “What you call stories we call history! It is not our fault humans live such short lives and must tell the tales to their descendants.”

“If Loki was that much of a bastard then why did you keep him around?”

“How can you ask such a question? He was my brother! And there were great moments as well! A giantess once demanded as redress for the death of her father that the gods of Asgard make her laugh. And as Loki was responsible for her father’s death - ”

“See?” Clint says.

“I’ve not finished! As Loki was responsible for her father’s death he took - ”

Thor stops, laughing to himself and unable to continue.

“He decided, to make her laugh, to tie one end of a rope to the beard of a goat, and he tied the other - ”

Thor smacks the wall of the plane, and holds his other hand down at his crotch.

“He tied the other to his own - ”

“We’re coming in over Sokovia,” Tony says.

Steve sags. He can guess the end of that story and it makes his eyes water.

They make a wide pass over their destination and see the compound below. Bunkers and turrets rise from snow covered terrain surrounding an ancient stone building. Hydra may have taken over the castle of a Sokovian railway tycoon.

“Strucker will be in there,” Steve says.

“There’s a lot of bullshit between us and him,” Bucky says.

“Well, we better get to shovelling.”

Turrets spew streams of energy instead of projectiles, lacing the air around the plane. One screams into a wing and the plane lists dangerously.

“Hang on, coming in for a landing,” Tony says.

Thor pounds on the release for the plane’s ramp and jumps from it as soon as it opens. A loud clunk under their feet must be him, aiding their descent. When the plane settles he whirls the hammer around his head and takes off behind it. Clunky suits of Hydra’s powered armor fly after him and he punches them out of the air.

“He can fly,” Bucky says dully.

Tony’s suit steps out of the bulkhead and wraps around him.

“So can I,” Tony says. “Jarvis get started on repairs.”

“Yes sir,” the plane replies.

Repulsors flare and Tony follows Thor up and away. Sam spreads his wings and lightly punches Bucky’s arm.

“Try to keep up,” he says, and lifts off.

Sam banks over the trees and circles overhead. Hydra’s aerial forces chase him.

A tank crests the ridge, advancing on the plane. Tony plunges from the sky and slams bodily into its gun, crushing it.

“Uh… Bruce, this looks like a Code Green,” Tony says.

Banner cringes. Natasha lays a comforting hand on his arm.

“Hey. The last time we tried the lullaby it worked great. I’ll be right with you.”

Natasha and Clint sprint down the ramp, dancing violently through approaching soldiers. Banner starts to unbutton his shirt, and turns to Bucky.

“You’re new here,” Banner says. “You’re going to want to run.”

Bucky breaks out of his stun, nods once, turns on his heel and takes off into the snow. Steve follows, giving Banner one look back as he runs. Banner collapses on the deck, growling and convulsing. His veins stand out green on his neck. 

Steve ducks behind a tree and The Hulk storms out of the plane. The handheld energy weapons Hydra’s soldiers fire at him smash into his skin and the blasts vanish ineffectually. He sweeps his enormous hand across the line of soldiers and they fly into the air, flail and fall in crumpled heaps.

Bucky pins himself to the tree beside Steve, goggling wide eyed at the Hulk as he stomps on the tank and leaps away, punching a path through Hydra’s line.

“I don’t like that!” Bucky says. “I don’t like that at all!”

“Neither does he,” Steve says. “Come on, forward, into that bunker.”

“Yes sir,” Bucky says.

Steve grimaces.

“You never called me sir,” Steve says. “You called me Rogers and snickered the whole time.”

“I know,” Bucky says. “It just slipped out.”

A jeep full of soldiers rears over the hill, and their blasts splinter the tree. Steve throws the shield into the front wheel and the jeep spins out, crashing into the tank. Bucky’s shots take the soldiers down when they try to stand.

The Avengers advance through chaos, unbelievable noise of rolling tanks and booming energy discharges. Everything glows and everything clangs, technology Steve nearly recognizes from the efforts of Red Skull and Arnim Zola in the war. He wonders first if they should’ve brought one of SHIELD’s teams to up the firepower, then knows he wouldn’t have been able to bring them all back. That, he also remembers.

Natasha steals one of Hydra’s jeeps and Clint climbs in the back, laying down fire. Sam draws flying soldiers into Tony’s orbit, and his blasts drop them to the snow. Thor crashes down to the top of a tower and Mjolnir flies away independently of him, both slamming into soldiers and tearing the structure apart. Tony fires into the engine of a jeep and it flips. The Hulk catches it and throws it into a turret, where both explode. The shield barely rests in Steve’s hand, flinging out again and again to trip and buckle soldiers and armor and vehicles.

And Bucky keeps up, running fast and firing faster. Steve can hardly tell Bucky’s black fatigues from Bucky’s shadow or his own.

Tony soars away to the central facility and clips the wall, and a blue field of light ripples out from his point of impact.

“Shit!”

“Jarvis, what's the view from upstairs?” Steve says.

“The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield,” Jarvis says in his ear. “Strucker's technology is well beyond any other Hydra base we've taken.”

“Loki's scepter must be here,” Thor says. “Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it.”

Guns and men line a perimeter of sandbags. Natasha dives over it and the ensuing sounds, while frantic, don’t last long. Clint takes cover behind it and arrows zing over them. Steve’s goal is still the central facility. And Strucker. Responsible for some later modifications. Steve barrels forward, trusting the support behind him and not slowing down.

A wavering streak, human sized but indistinct, races across the snow. As soon as Steve sees it it hits him, flipping him into the air, and the impact feels like being hit by a person at impossible speed. Bucky grunts next to him. Steve lands on his feet. Bucky sits up fast, knocked to the ground, rifle raised. The streak is gone.

“We have an enhanced in the field,” Steve says.

He glances at Bucky as he gets to his feet.

“Don’t look at me!” Bucky says. “They only _thought_ I knew everything!”

“Sam what do you see?” Steve says.

“Nothing. Can’t tell him from the wind.”

“Clint's hit!” Natasha says. “Somebody want to deal with that bunker?”

The Hulk barrels through solid walls and out the other side. He shrugs concrete off the back of his neck and smacks soldiers away.

“Thank you,” Natasha says.

Soldiers surround Steve. He throws the shield to bounce across them and ducks their fire, and hears heavy blows from Bucky’s fist landing on armor and shattering it.

“Stark, we really need to get inside,” Steve says.

“I'm closing in.”

A blast from a Hydra rifle burns into Steve’s side and knocks him down to the snow. The shield falls in the space where he stood. Bucky draws a pistol with one hand and fires, lifts the shield with the other and throws it into the riflemen. The shield wobbles in the air and careens wildly, but it hits two of them before it falls again. Bucky’s shots drop the others. Steve activates the retraction in his uniform and the shield returns to his arm.

“Thanks,” Steve says.

“You can keep that thing,” Bucky says. “I think it only listens to you.”

Blue energy shimmers over the central building and recedes.

“Drawbridge is down, people,” Tony says.

Thor lands at Steve’s side with Mjolnir into the ground, casting off a wave of force that knocks soldiers aside.

“The enhanced?” Thor says.

“He's a blur. All the new players we've faced, I've never seen this. In fact, I still haven't.”

“Clint's hit pretty bad, guys,” Natasha says. “We're gonna need evac.”

“I can get Barton to the jet,” Thor says. “The sooner we're gone the better. You and Stark secure the scepter.”

“Copy that.”

A tank rolls up the hill, surrounded by footsoldiers. Steve notes the treads, the mounting for the gun, its velocity and where he could hit it, turn it, maybe kill two birds with one stone and tip it onto the soldiers… 

“Looks like they're lining up,” Thor says.

Steve stops. Teamwork.

“Well, they're excited.”

Steve braces himself behind the shield. Thor raises his arm wielding Mjolnir and slams the hammer into the shield. Lightning blasts into the tank and the strike flings the soldiers to the ground. Much more efficient than Steve could’ve done it. Though, he could’ve. 

Bucky’s jaw drops.

“Find the scepter,” Thor says. He winds up the hammer on his wrist, and it flies into the air, carrying him behind it.

“You have such interesting friends,” Bucky says.

“They kinda found me.”

“That happens to you a lot.”

“I’m getting used to it.”

They fight up to the facility and once inside are suddenly in silence. They proceed down the musty dark corridors ready for resistance they do not meet. Their footsteps echo.

“They must’ve all left to meet us outside,” Steve says.

Bucky flicks his wrist and the display lights, showing diagrams of the building and their location in it.

“That way,” he says, pointing down a hallway.

“We're locked down out here,” Natasha says.

“Then get to Banner,” Steve says. “Time for a lullaby.”

They turn a corner, and Strucker stands alone in an empty laboratory. Bucky puts his back to the wall and watches the doors, and Steve approaches the mad scientist.

“Baron Strucker,” Steve says.

“Captain America. And the Winter Soldier. A historical pair.”

Strucker nods respectfully to Bucky.

“There are those who would call this ironic but I consider it an honor. Not hoisted by my own petard, as they would say. But admiring such ingenious creations.”

Steve scowls. Hatred swells in his chest. Whatever part this man played in the creation of the Winter Soldier was too much, any touch evil. The fool dismissed any backup and faced them with nothing but his ridiculous monocle and there would be no witnesses to Steve’s revenge but Bucky.

Who followed him into the jaws of death. Thinking he was a good man.

Personal is not always the same as important.

“Where's Loki's scepter?” Steve says.

Strucker raises his hands.

“Don't worry. I know when I'm beat. You'll mention how I cooperated, I hope.”

“I'll put it right under illegal human experimentation,” Steve says. “How many are there?”

“I’ve got movement,” Bucky says.

Steve turns. A young woman in red stands at the top of the stairs. She twists her hands in the air and a thin cloud of red tendrils whips out at them. The force that throws them to the floor hits his whole body at once and rattles everything inside, penetrating and confounding.

Steve climbs to his feet with some difficulty. The woman is gone.

“We have a second enhanced,” Steve says over the com. “Female. Do not engage.”

Strucker draws himself up and sneers at Steve.

“You'll have to be faster than…”

Steve kicks the edge of the shield and flings it into Strucker’s face. That man has said enough. His head bounces back onto the wall, and he falls still. Steve catches the shield on the rebound. Bucky snorts a laugh.

“Guys, I got Strucker,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I got… something bigger.”

Steve lifts Strucker’s unconscious body over his shoulder.

“Buck? Go, get to Tony.”

“Roger that.”

Bucky looks down at his display and darts out of the room.

Steve hauls Strucker outside and deposits him in the snow. To his complete lack of surprise, now familiar matte black jets land in the rubble of the compound. SHIELD let the Avengers do the heavy lifting and only showed up for the cleanup. 

Steve stands over Strucker until agents bind and lift him away. SHIELD’s revenge may be worse than his. When Strucker is stowed aboard he picks his way back across the battlefield to Tony’s jet.

Clint lies on a stretcher, groaning softly and being tended to by Natasha. Banner huddles on the floor, wrapped in a blanket and holding headphones to his ears. Sam pulls his goggles off and rubs his eyes. Thor paces, waiting impatiently. 

And they wait, until Tony lands on the deck with Loki’s scepter in his hand. He opens a containment unit in the wall and places the staff inside.

“That’s all she wrote,” Tony says. “Let’s go home.”

Tony steps out of his armor and it folds itself away. Bucky climbs the ramp behind him, twisting a finger in his ear. Tony takes the pilot’s seat and the engines roar.

“What took you?” Steve says.

“Ran into that girl again,” Bucky says. His face screws up and he shakes it smooth. “She tried to fuck with my head.”

“What?”

“I started seeing things. Gave me a headache.”

Steve’s brow draws in concern. Bucky waves a hand, dismissing it.

“I’m alright,” Bucky says. “I’ve learned a thing or two about resisting mind control.”

Steve’s concern remains. It wouldn’t be unbelievable given Baron Strucker, given Loki’s staff, and the machinations of Hydra. Bucky didn’t always resist them.

Bucky takes a step closer to him.

“You can chain me down if you’re worried,” Bucky says quietly. “It’s not necessary but it could be fun.”

And that sounds about right. Bucky’s eyes sparkle. Steve covers his mouth with his hand, holding down the giddy response that bubbles up through the doubt. The confusion surrounding Bucky has a different color to it now.

“She’s gone?” Steve says.

“I hit her and she bolted.”

The sparkle winks out of Bucky’s eyes, and he strips off the weaponry.

“She was just a kid, Steve. I really don’t like having to hit kids.”

Steve reaches out and squeezes his arm.

“I know, pal.”

Bucky touches his hand, and moves off. He stands over Clint, and Natasha nods at him.

“You doing alright there buddy?” Bucky says.

“Just a scratch,” Clint mumbles. “Let me at ‘em. Did we win?”

Bucky and Natasha smile. First at Clint, and then at each other.

Natasha gently taps Clint’s foot and crouches beside Banner. He takes his headphones off to talk with her and their soft conversation radiates comfort. Steve gives them space. That’s nice to see too.

Loki’s scepter in the wall casts off a glow of swirling lustrous power. It is strangely beautiful, so much like the Cube, and just as vulgar in the hands of Hydra. The light playing in containment is comforting. He knows where it is. And Hydra can’t have it anymore.

Thor stands over it like a prize fighter over his belt. He crosses his arms and nods satisfaction.

“Thor, report on the Hulk?” Natasha says.

“The gates of Hell are filled with the screams of his victims!” Thor says, pumping his fist in the air.

Natasha glares at him. Banner groans and wraps himself tighter in the blanket.

“Uh, but, not the screams of the dead, of course,” Thor says. “No no, uh… wounded screams, mainly whimpering, a great deal of complaining and tales of sprained deltoids and, and uh... and gout.”

Bucky stares openly at Banner, plainly as intrigued as he is afraid. There is some fellow feeling there. Bruce probably won’t want to talk about it. Then again neither would Bucky. But they’re not alone. They’re on the right team.

“Hey Banner,” Tony says from the cockpit. “Dr. Cho's on her way in from Seoul. Is it okay if she sets up in your lab?”

“Uh, yeah, she knows her way around.”

Tony leaves the driving to Jarvis and joins them in the hold. He claps Thor on the shoulder to no effect, and taps the containment unit with his foot.

“It feels good, yeah? I mean, you've been after this thing since New York. Not that I haven't enjoyed our little raiding parties, but…”

“No, but this… This brings it to a close,” Thor says.

“As soon as we find out what else this has been used for,” Steve says. “I don't just mean weapons. Those two enhanced need some explaining.”

“Banner and I'll give it the once over before it goes back to Asgard,” Tony says. “Is that cool with you?”

Thor nods thoughtfully.

“And you're staying for the farewell party, right?” Tony says.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Thor says. “A victory should be honored with revels.”

“Yeah. Who doesn't love revels. Captain?”

Steve nods. Tony throws a heck of a party. And he could celebrate the relief in this end of a terrible struggle.

He looks over at Bucky. Bucky kicks his feet up on a box of equipment, folds his hands, and winks at Steve. Some celebration is definitely appropriate.

“Hopefully this puts an end to the Chitauri and Hydra,” Steve says. “So, yes. Revels.”

Tony follows Steve’s gaze, and tips his head at Bucky.

“Barnes, this is your win too. Celebratory drinks, tonight, just a couple of friends. Wear something nice.”

Bucky shrugs.

“How could I refuse?”

“Politely,” Sam says.

Bucky points at him.

“Soon, Wilson,” Bucky says. “Soon.”

Steve chuckles and takes the seat beside him, and gently shoulders him in token admonishment. Truth is he’s looking forward to the time when Bucky can snipe back at Sam. And it feels like it’s just a matter of time. In the future and not just in a wish.

Bucky leans close to Steve’s shoulder.

“You know,” he says, “even though this wasn’t the first time we’ve been together in the field since… Y’know, since, everything, it was still kind of…”

Steve nods. The first time they’d really been working together instead of arguing at cross purposes. The first time they’d been able to rely on each other and play off of each other. The first time that felt secure.

“I know what you mean,” Steve says.

He jostles Bucky’s leg with his knee.

“We still make a good team,” Steve says.

Bucky smiles.

“Yes we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you ask: No, I am not going all the way through Age of Ultron. The way I see it if Bucky stopped Wanda from getting to Tony then that movie doesn’t happen. I did that on purpose.


	24. Chapter 24

It seems to Steve that Tony found even more space in the Tower to fill with celebration, removed walls and installed tiers to lattice this room with glass and furniture and people and pack it edge to edge. Tony’s music is light and energetic and just loud enough to compete with the room wide babble of conversation. Some of the people Steve recognizes, the Avengers themselves and their nearest and dearest, but many of them must be Stark’s connections and for all Steve knows people who paid to be here.

There are a lot of old soldiers in old uniforms. They find Steve quickly. They want him to tell stories but they want to tell theirs too and Steve mostly listens. He prefers it. They start a game of pool and pull him into it. Dozens of strangers scoot past sideways with barely enough room to pass between the couches and the end of their cues.

When Sam arrives he gets drawn in too. The word “whippersnapper” passes the soldiers’ lips at least once. Steve bites his tongue. Depending on how you count, Sam is older than he is. But Sam lets the soldiers presume Steve is one of them. It’s not a matter of how much experience but of _which_ experiences, exactly.

The soldiers win and lose at pool and drift off in ones and twos to engage Tony and Thor and Natasha and any other heroes they can find. Sam points his cue at Steve.

“Alright, you and me, let’s go.”

“Rack ‘em up,” Steve says.

“We gonna make it interesting?”

“Same as always.”

Sam racks the balls and Steve breaks. SHIELD agents pause on their way past to greet them and comment on the game. They alternate shots until it looks like Steve is winning.

“Evening, Captain Rogers!” a cheerful voice calls from the end of the table.

“Evening, Cavanaugh,” Steve says, and lines up his shot.

The man behind Cavanaugh steps up to the edge of the table, and Steve looks up at him, and his cue swings wide. The cue ball rolls into the side pocket.

“Great shot,” Bucky says.

Steve doesn’t care. Tony just _had_ to tell him to wear something nice. Steve had just about gotten used to the fatigues.

Bucky is a picture of sophistication with his hair loose brushing the collar of a blazer so blue it’s almost black. The gray rough silk shirt underneath is open at the neck, and he hooks his thumbs in the pockets of dark jeans, smirking down at Steve.

“Requisitions,” Bucky says by way of explanation, tugging on his lapel.

Steve closes his mouth.

“Well _now_ you look good,” he says.

Bucky smiles.

“Yeah I still clean up alright,” he says.

“Oh spare me,” Sam grumbles, plucking the cue ball out of the pocket.

Bucky pans slowly across the crowded room, and fixes his eyes on the bar.

“I’m gonna go get a drink,” Bucky says.

“No, you stand right there,” Sam says. “You just stand there and look pretty and let me win some money off Steve while he’s distracted.”

Steve licks his lips and decides to say nothing. Sam knows, and more than Steve has told him, in knowing Steve well enough.

Bucky chuckles.

“Split it with me.”

“Nope. If you want Steve’s money I think all you gotta do is ask.”

Bucky scoffs. “I’m going to get a drink,” he says again, and walks away from the table.

Sam sinks the fifteen. Steve does a very good job pretending to aim for the four and sinking the eight early. Sam rolls his eyes. Steve pulls out his wallet, drops their usual wager in front of Sam and follows Bucky.

“I still get to tell people I beat you?” Sam says.

“Absolutely.”

Bucky downs the first drink at the bar and passes the glass back to the bartender. Looks like he ordered a double and ended it just as quick. Steve finds himself strafing sideways to not come up directly behind him. He can see that getting him an accidental elbow to the teeth.

“One more and one for my friend if you would,” Bucky says to the bartender.

“What’re we drinking to?” Steve says.

“World peace,” Bucky says sarcastically.

The bartender places glasses down full and Bucky swallows half of his. He raps his fingers on the edge of the bar and sets his back to the wall. His eyes jump from level to level and side to side.

“Just a couple of friends huh?” he says.

“As far as Tony is concerned,” Steve says. “If he threw a big party it would take up half the island.”

Clint joins them at the bar and Bucky seems to catch himself. He raises his glass to Clint.

“He lives!” Bucky says.

“The inestimable doctor Cho fixed me right up,” Clint says, indicating the woman at his side, who smiles shyly.

Clint lifts the edge of his shirt to show the complete lack of wound or scar tissue. Bucky whistles. Either Clint is some comfort or Bucky cares enough about him to fake comfort. Steve suspects the former.

“Miracle worker,” Clint says.

“No, not at all,” doctor Cho says.

“Buy you both a drink?” Bucky says.

“It’s an open bar!” Clint says.

“Good, I don’t have any money.”

“You are Bucky Barnes?” doctor Cho asks.

“That’s what they tell me,” Bucky says.

“I’m sorry… You are really Bucky Barnes?”

Bucky glances at Steve. Steve shrugs. All day every day.

“Yes,” Bucky says.

“Best part of Tony Stark,” Clint says, picking up a glass, “is this right here.”

“I’ll argue that,” Bucky says. “Try the bottle next to that one.”

“Mister Barnes, I’d like to have a conversation with you, if you have the time,” doctor Cho says.

Steve lays a hand on Bucky’s arm and hopes he can still ask with an expression, raising an eyebrow, if he wants Steve to stick around. Bucky nods Steve away.

“Go mingle,” Bucky says. “Sure, doctor, I’ve got the time.”

Steve drifts a bit away through the party. He will take Bucky at his word. He tries to keep his backwards looks in the corners of his eyes. A few steps would bring him back to Bucky.

He passes greetings and small conversations and drinks from what turns out to be whiskey. Bucky’s tastes haven’t changed. Thor’s effusive storytelling is in full swing, arms waving and audience exclaiming, and Steve stops to listen.

“And then the fel creature swooped from the sky, and I called upon the great lightning from the top of the tower, and with a mighty strike I smote it to ruins!”

He’s talking about their battle against the Chitauri. It feels ages ago. Longer ago than the war somehow.

Bucky appears at Steve’s side. His glass is full again.

“Everything alright?” Steve asks.

“Tell you later,” Bucky says.

“Behind the creature was another of its kin!” Thor says. “And I leapt upon its back to join the Hulk in fighting the invaders off its hide and ripping from it one of its own scales and driving it into its brain!”

“No!” someone gasps.

“This is a lot of people…” Bucky mutters.

Just as Bucky’s discomfort registers clearly to Steve, Bucky rolls his shoulders and lifts his head and tips the glass at Thor.

“It’s just been a long time since I’ve been surrounded by people who could stomp me into a greasy smear on the tile,” he says.

No one is listening to them, wrapped up in Thor’s telling. Bucky is probably lying. But Steve lets him lie. And tries to sound convincing anyway.

“Well, surrounded, that’s a little… Thor, yes. And the Hulk. Tony and Rhodes… I don’t know, depends on how fast they could get to their armor. Sam’s wings wouldn’t do him much good in here. After that it’s all guts and guns and they’d really have to get the drop on you.”

Bucky peers sideways at him.

“You sound like you’ve thought about this.”

“Part of the job.”

“Well I’m glad you didn’t include yourself in that.”

Steve nods slowly. He’d instinctively assumed even in the hypothetical that he’d be with Bucky and not against him.

“We already know how that goes,” Steve says.

“Badly,” Bucky says.

Thor pulls out a flask and gestures at Steve with it.

“I fought in the streets alongside Captain Rogers,” Thor says. “Never have I seen an Earthling fight with such determination!”

Bucky leans over to Steve.

“When they said 'alien'…” he says.

“Yeah,” Steve says. "Alien."

Thor gives a rousing blow by blow of the battle he doesn’t even have to embellish to astound listeners. Occasionally as they watch the partygoers watching Thor, Steve feels the tips of Bucky’s fingers brushing his shirt, not pulling or holding on to the fabric but seeming to confirm his nearness. He looks the part but the ease with which Steve is accustomed to watching Bucky move through crowds is gone.

Steve doesn’t begrudge him the contact. He returns it, briefly fingering the edge of Bucky’s jacket. And decides he won’t be walking away from him again tonight.

Thor drinks from his flask. One of the old soldiers reaches for it.

“I gotta have some of that!” he says.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Thor says. “See this, this was aged for a thousand years, in the barrels built from the wreck of Brunhilde's fleet.”

Thor pours some of its contents into the glass in Steve’s hand, and some into Bucky’s.

“It's not meant for mortal men,” Thor says.

Steve and Bucky exchange a glance over the eye-searing alcohol wafting out of their glasses, and deign to comment.

“Neither was Omaha Beach, blondie,” the soldier says. “Stop trying to scare us. Come on.”

Thor shrugs.

“Alright,” he says, and pours some into the old man’s glass.

Bucky drinks from the melded liquor in his and pulls a face. Steve sniffs his first and comes to the same conclusion. But an alien beverage is worth trying. Once.

It tastes like it was used to strip the wood to build Brunhilde’s fleet. He swallows without cringing. Barely.

The old soldier is upright in his chair for another few minutes, starting his own story and quickly losing the thread. He wavers and he tips forward into the arms of a nearby friend.

“Excelsior…” the old man mumbles.

Bucky drains his glass, though he looks like he regrets it.

“Ugh. Worth a shot but this is doing less than nothing for me,” he says.

“You too?” Steve says.

“Didn’t know it til right now. Fine time to find out I can’t get drunk anymore.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I… I figured that out… a while ago.”

“And if that’s what they drink on Asgard I think I’ll stick to whiskey.”

“Another?”

“Nah I think I’m giving up on that for the night. Any more of it and I think you’d be able to use my blood to light a fire.”

Steve takes Bucky’s empty glass from his unresisting hand.

“We’ll return these then,” Steve says.

He turns to the bar fully expecting Bucky to follow him. He does.

Natasha has taken up station behind the bar just for shits and grins. Banner perches on the other side, and when Natasha reaches over to pass him a cocktail the soft smile on her face and gentle curve of her posture are the genuine expression of the materials she used to make her mask. Steve can’t help but smile. He half overhears their conversation and it sounds lovely.

Natasha leaves the bar to get another bottle, and Steve sets the glasses down and nods at Banner.

“That's nice,” he says.

“What, what, what is?” Banner stammers.

“You and Romanov.”

“No, we haven't. That wasn't…”

Banner loses track of his eyeglasses and searches for them, in his pants pockets, his jacket pockets, finds them on the bar.

“It's okay,” Steve says and holds up a reassuring hand. “Nobody's breaking any by-laws. It's just, she's not the most... open person in the world. But with you she seems very relaxed.”

“No, Natasha, she… She likes to flirt.”

Steve chuckles.

“I've seen her flirt, up close. This ain't that. Look, maybe you don’t wanna hear it from me, but you both deserve a win.”

Steve leaves the bar. Bucky meets him, shaking his head.

“Wait, what do you mean, "up close"?” Banner calls after him. Steve pretends he didn’t hear him.

Bucky wraps his right hand in Steve’s left elbow and pulls him to a stop.

“Hey… You wanna get out of here?” Bucky says.

Steve expects the glint in his eye, and it’s there, but he’s forcing it. Covering discomfort with suggestion. Steve’s excitement is severely tempered.

“They can still track you,” Steve says.

“I don’t want to hide. Just want a moment of your time.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere. So long as it’s quiet.”

Steve finds Maria Hill and Cavanaugh in the crowd, both engaged in animated conversations and not paying them any attention. He can find somewhere quiet.

“Slip your chaperones and I’ll call us a cab,” Steve says.

“Meet you downstairs,” Bucky says.


	25. Chapter 25

Steve tells the cab driver to take them to East River Park and they make the drive in silence. Nothing they have to say to each other needs saying in front of a cabbie. The car stops on 10th next to the overpass and Bucky gets out and walks quickly away up and over it. Steve pays the driver and jogs to catch up.

Traffic is low and foot traffic nonexistent but Bucky doesn’t slow down until they’ve crossed the park to the path along the river. It’s too late for the evening dog walkers and too early for the morning joggers and the only other occupants are a couple of night owls talking on the bleachers by the ballpark. They’re too far away to hear when Bucky stops at the barricade to the river.

Streetlamps lay down pools of light and Bucky stands between them. He runs his hands back through his hair, tilts his head up at the night sky, and sighs heavily.

“Better?” Steve says.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The summer air is barely cooled by nighttime darkness or the breeze. Bucky takes his jacket off and carries it. Steve isn’t sure who’s leading and who’s following but they stroll toward the bridge, covering easy and meaningless ground in step.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Steve says. “But if you want to, I’ll listen.”

Bucky draws his thoughts together for a moment, gazing upwards. The fence around the ballpark hems them onto the path but it’s open to the overcast sky, with clouds blocking the stars and the moon and reflecting the lights of the city back down onto them.

“Having that many people that close, it’s…” Bucky says. “When there’s that many people that close to me it’s because half of them are trying to kill the other half.”

Nothing but battle back to the train and no choice in the matter. Lots of it before that, and only some choice. Steve’s year as a soldier and assorted missions as an Avenger do not compare. He had Sam and the gym, sketchbooks and Natasha, some attempt at a life and connections… 

“Yeah…” Steve says. All he can say.

“I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Yeah.”

“Just haven’t had to try to turn that off yet.”

“One of Tony’s parties probably wasn’t a great first try.”

“He said ‘a couple of friends…’”

“Yeah I know he’s… I wasn’t expecting all that either.”

Steve takes out his cigarettes and lights one, lights another from it and passes it to Bucky. Bucky takes one drag from it, and then ignores it.

“I promise he won’t take offense if you say no,” Steve says. “He probably won’t even notice.”

“Tony Stark is something else.”

“You got that right.”

The fence around the ballpark ends at a dark courtyard, thick trees blocking the streetlamps to keep the light off of the benches. They pass it by.

“Some of SHIELD’s doctors were, y’know, brain doctors,” Bucky says. “They wanted me to talk.”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t really want to talk to SHIELD.”

“I get that.”

Stone clicks under their shoes. The small sounds spread out away from them. Traffic on the road outside the park is a distant drone and the breeze in the grass an occasional hush.

“I don’t think your papers are still valid at the V.A. but Sam knows some people,” Steve says. “I can talk to him, if you’d rather not.”

“I think I can talk to him…” Bucky says. “But I might tag you in.”

“Sure.”

They sidestep bollards on the branching path, taking the one closer to the river. The stone is interrupted by metal grating that clangs softly. Steve drops the butt of his cigarette through it. Water licks at the rocks under their feet, slapping harder and reaching higher when ripples from a passing barge reach the shore.

“What about you?” Bucky says. “Avenger save thyself?”

Steve chuckles. “No, you got me there. I have a… special relationship with a heavy bag.”

“I’m sure it loves you back.”

“I’m really sure it doesn’t.”

The paths rejoin and they step back onto stone. Thousands of colored lights reach unsteadily across the moving surface of the river from the city on the other side.

“So what did Doctor Cho have to say?” Steve asks.

“She, uh… She told me about the work she’s doing. How she healed Clint.”

Connections fire quickly and Steve clears the conclusion from a standing jump.

“She was talking about your arm,” Steve says.

Bucky nods absently.

“She said she can remake it. The whole thing. And it’d be like I never lost it.”

“When can she start?” Steve says.

Bucky says nothing. His stride slows and Steve slows to keep alongside. It takes too many steps for Steve to consider that might not have been the right thing to say. Though he can’t think of why.

“What am I missing?” Steve says.

Bucky flicks his cigarette out at Williamsburg.

“It’s mine,” Bucky says.

He lapses into silence again. Steve can’t trust himself to respond, fighting his own confusion and selfishness on the subject. He said he’d do better by Bucky. Not himself.

“I lost my arm when I fell,” Bucky says eventually. “Risk I took. Fighting, that was my choice. They gave me this and that wasn’t.”

Bucky taps the tips of his fingers together, with a little tick each time.

“But this hasn’t felt separate for a long time,” he says. “I don’t know how to explain how you can get used to things. I know what it feels like. It’s… mine.”

Steve wishes he could explain and refuses to stop him to ask. It’s the most Bucky has said at once about anything that happened between the train and D.C. and he’s not hiding anything and Steve said he would listen. No matter if he doesn’t like what he hears. No more of avoiding that.

Bucky raises his left hand clenched in a humming fist.

“And I know what I can do,” Bucky says. “I can stop a fucking car. I can break their armor like other people tear the wrapper off a candy bar.”

He opens his hand and holds it out, staring at his own palm.

“I took this from them. I’m not wearing their damned star anymore but… I don’t know if I want to give it up. And I don’t know if I want to go back to being that weak on that side.”

“You were never… Weak is not the word I would use,” Steve says.

That sounds too much like taking his own side in the argument. Not taking Bucky’s.

“But it’s up to you, Buck,” he says. “I’m not gonna tell you what to do.”

Bucky nods, and smiles slightly, and smacks Steve’s arm with the back of his right hand.

“You never could,” he says.

Steve smiles back at him.

“No, we had stubborn in common.”

“And I’ll tell ya, I’m getting a kick out of Tony’s modifications. I can… Lemme show you something.”

Bucky looks around them for follow or pursuit and finds none yet. He steps off the path into the next darkened cul de sac, rolling up his left sleeve, and Steve follows him behind a shuttered rental stand. Bucky drapes his jacket in his elbow and taps at commands on his forearm and his display lights.

In the air between them a silent video starts playing. It’s black and white, and blurry with age. And shows two lovers in uniform. Laughing.

Steve swallows the tension in his throat.

“How did you get that?” he asks.

“The Smithsonian archives aren’t very well protected,” Bucky says.

The short video repeats. One captured moment, some weeks before either of them fell. Possibly the only film with both of them on it. Steve has asked around. The incidental items in their apartment vanished into time.

“They wouldn’t let me have it,” Steve says.

“I didn’t ask,” Bucky says.

They watch the video repeat again. Bucky’s right hand, perhaps unknown to him, drifts up to rest on Steve’s belt, one finger idly slipping into a loop of his pants. Steve doesn’t need the hook to keep him close.

“I like having that on me,” Bucky says. “Won’t lose it.”

“Yeah…”

Bucky closes his hand on the video and it stops.

“So I told Doctor Cho I’d think about it,” he says.

“Whatever you decide,” Steve says.

And he has to mean it. If what’s left of those lovers in uniform is still standing. Bucky looks up at him and Steve knows why he took the video. Bucky is touching him and trying on a hesitant smile and he doesn’t just want to remember what they were and doesn’t know if he has to.

If that arm - Steve stops himself. If Bucky’s arm isn’t going to change, and if Steve wants him and God he does, Bucky is so easy to touch and smile at but for that one thing… 

Steve takes Bucky’s left wrist in his hand. Servos vibrate faintly just holding his arm up, holding his hand still. The metal so slick it feels wet sends conflicting signals to Steve’s mind from the shape, perfectly designed to be almost human – Not almost. Bucky is human. As human as Steve is.

Maybe he just imagines it but he thinks Bucky is trembling. He worries his bottom lip with his teeth, scarcely breathing, anticipating Steve’s reaction. Steve holds the back of Bucky’s fingers to his cheek. The cool metal tells him how warm his face is. Bucky’s breath comes back ragged.

“You don’t have to do that,” Bucky says. “Might change my mind tomorrow and not even have it much longer.”

Steve twines his fingers into Bucky’s. When Bucky squeezes his fingers there is no crush. He’s controlled. And gentle.

“You have it now,” Steve says. “And you’re here now. If we get to tomorrow… We’ll deal with tomorrow.”

Bucky lifts his fingers and traces the bone of Steve’s cheek. Steve’s eyes want to turn away from them, his head wants to pull back, but it’s not what he wants. Bucky is trying and testing and Steve will be damned if he keeps failing.

“I hate scaring you…” Bucky says.

Steve lets go of Bucky’s hand on his face, removing any restraint on his touch.

“That’s not your problem,” Steve says.

Bucky’s hand slides across the back of his neck, and draws him in. Bucky’s jacket slithers down from his elbow and slumps on the ground. And then he’s kissing him, arm pinned against Steve’s chest. The metal is cold through his shirt but Steve can handle cold. His mouth yields to hot breath and bold tongues and his arms clasp around Bucky entirely.

The gaps between the smallest plates on Bucky’s fingers snag the hair on the back of Steve’s neck but the same thing happened with his ring when he was wearing it. Bucky isn’t going to hurt him. _Bucky_ never would.

“This is kinda familiar,” Bucky says breathlessly.

“Is it?” Steve says.

Bucky kisses him again. Steve says no more about it. Kissing him, and finding a dark corner to do it in, is familiar. 

Bucky’s weight drives him back into the wall of the rental shed and his other hand grips Steve’s hip, keeping them together from nose to knees. Steve drops his mouth from Bucky’s to kiss along his jaw and into the hollow of his throat and taste his skin and rediscover those sensitive places. Bucky’s fingers ply Steve’s hair, encouraging, and he makes quiet cut off gasps when Steve’s lips move.

He shifts his feet and one thigh presses between Steve’s legs and reason takes an unexpected vacation from the compression in his groin. Steve quakes and wraps his hands in Bucky’s belt, pulls on the leather and cants his hips forward to meet pressure with pressure and hear Bucky finally lose the battle with noise and moan in his ear. It’s an ancient and powerful sound and Steve craves hearing it again, opens his mouth on Bucky’s neck and rolls his hips to hear it again. 

Bucky whimpers instead and his hands fly to the sides of Steve’s face, hauling him around to claim his lips again. He kisses him long and deep and both of his thumbs on Steve’s cheeks exert the same force, just enough, touching, caressing him. Sometimes Bucky’s hands were cold. Steve’s often were. It meant very little. And leaning into his kiss, it means very little now.

Footsteps rustle the grass and click on stone. Bucky yanks back and Steve’s hands in his belt hold firm.

“Very funny, Captain Rogers,” Cavanaugh calls down the path.

What Steve expected to hear sooner or later. And Bucky did too, as soon as his brain caught up. Bucky relaxes and Steve lets go of his belt.

“I thought so,” Steve calls back to Cavanaugh.

They’re still hidden in the lee of the rental shed and in darkness and Bucky tips his head to press his forehead to Steve’s.

“God dammit,” Bucky whispers.

Steve kisses him quickly and silently. Bucky takes a step back and straightens his clothes, and Steve settles his hair.

“I’ll go without a fight,” Bucky says.

“I know that,” Cavanaugh says. “You’re just wasting my time.”

Bucky bends down and picks up his jacket, shakes dirt and grass off of it, and tosses it over his shoulder.

“Hey you’re on the clock, Lenny. I’m getting you that sweet overtime.”

“Overtime? What the hell is that? Come on, no hard feelings, but we gotta go.”

“Alright, alright.”

Bucky shakes his head. They round the corner of the rental shed and Cavanaugh stands under one of the streetlamps, arms crossed, long suffering persistence on his face.

“Lenny?” Steve says.

“It’s his name?” Bucky says.

“I… I’m sure it is.”

Cavanaugh turns and leads them out of the park to SHIELD’s black sedan, and behind him Steve and Bucky lag like reluctant teenagers, sneaking little unseen touches behind the adults’ backs. When Bucky gently shoves him and smiles Steve is reassured that Bucky can see the comedy in a momentary setback. Certainly momentary.

“You remember when that photographer showed up?” Bucky asks him.

“Yeah. Told us to ‘act natural.’”

“Yeah that wasn’t gonna happen.”

Steve steals one arm around his waist, squeezes and lets go.

“I think that was pretty natural,” he says.

“We were gearing up for a mission. I was in the middle of arguing with you. Telling you off would’ve been natural. But I had to leave you some dignity on film.”

Steve laughs. “So generous of you.”

“That’s the kind of guy I am.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Well…” Bucky drops his voice. “I took it back didn’t I?”

Steve shivers. He sure as hell did. Took Steve’s dignity and spread it thin on a hotel room floor.

Cavanaugh opens the car door for Bucky. He gets in with one last look back at Steve before the door closes, amusement and desire together. Steve wonders how much it would take for Tony to deactivate SHIELD’s tracking device and whether or not Tony would ask him why.

He nods at Cavanaugh, and watches the car pull out onto the street and drive away. Then pulls out his phone to get himself home.

Seven missed calls between Natasha, Maria Hill, and Sam.

He ignores them and calls another cab. They’re smart enough to figure out where he went.

And when he’s alone in his bed staring in sleepless excitement at his ceiling after some unsure hours he finds himself with a longing hand and lets himself touch blazing olive skin in his imagination for the first time since the train until he crumples into his sheets spent and calm, wipes off, and sleeps.


	26. Chapter 26

The morning sun plays cheerfully in Steve’s window and he throws his curtains open to let it in. Outside the neighborhood shadows are already on the retreat from the light, and his world is domed over by a beautiful dawn blue sky. Steve washes and dresses aiming to get out of his apartment as quickly as possible.

The Avengers have a couple of loose ends to tie off but they’ve reached a holding pattern. Until the next alien invasion, or the next supernatural international conspiracy, Steve’s day is his own. And he knows exactly what he wants in it. He calls Cavanaugh, and when the car arrives he doesn’t wait for the driver to open the door for him.

“And a good morning to you as well Captain Rogers,” Cavanaugh says when Steve climbs in the back seat.

“I think we can skip all the bowing and scraping at this point, what do you say?” Steve says.

“Whatever floats your boat,” Cavanaugh replies. “Your friend just curses about it.”

“Yeah that sounds like him.”

Cavanaugh glances hesitantly at Steve in the rearview mirror.

“Captain, if you don’t mind my asking… I told him he must be pulling my leg, but… Did you really fight a Nazi clone of Frankenstein’s monster?”

Steve laughs, and shakes his head.

“Agent Cavanaugh, take my advice? Don’t believe anything Bucky Barnes tells you.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Streets roll by. Bricked in by morning traffic Steve feels like he could get to Jersey faster if he got out and ran. He would even be willing to swim the river. He notices his foot tapping on the floor of the car and questions his agitation, tries to recognize the shape of it, and he does. He tapped the same rhythm on the floors of Jeeps in Europe, on his way back to a base, in between flurries of action, wishing the vehicles could carry him back to Bucky as fast as he wanted them to.

“He sure is a character,” Cavanaugh says.

Steve snaps out of his distraction and nods.

“That he is,” he says.

“Bit of a pain in the ass, if you’ll pardon my language…”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

Steve sobers, thinking through implications. Cavanaugh sounds genuine enough now and he did even in Bucky’s presence last night. Bucky calls him by his first name but Cavanaugh is a SHIELD chauffeur due to bullets taken in the Triskelion.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Steve says, “did my friend tell you who he is?”

“He didn’t have to. SHIELD gave me the rundown before they put him in my car.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“I’ve got a job to do.”

Steve nods. His tapping foot slows and stops.

“But I’ll be frank with you, Captain,” Cavanaugh says. “I saw the Winter Soldier in D.C. And if it wasn’t Agent Hill saying so, I wouldn’t have believed mister Barnes was the same person.”

“He isn’t,” Steve says.

“Suppose that’s the right way to look at it. Docs say he didn’t mean it and that’s what he says too.”

“Yeah.”

“So I figure, Bucky’s a decent guy with some funny stories,” Cavanaugh says, smiling at Steve in the rearview. “I don’t mind having him in my car.”

Steve takes a slow breath in, and relaxes his shoulders letting it out.

“Glad to hear it,” he says.

A moment later his foot starts bouncing on the floor of the car again.

When they finally park outside SHIELD’s facility, Cavanaugh doesn’t make for Steve’s door. He unclips his badge from his shirt and hands it back over the seat.

“Not sure why they ever thought you needed an escort,” he says. “And this place gives me the heebie jeebies if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Steve says and takes the badge. “Thanks.”

Cavanaugh opens his glovebox and pulls out a battered paperback. Steve uses his badge to summon the elevator down to SHIELD.

He heads down through the halls toward Bucky’s cell and is pleasantly surprised that he doesn’t have to get that far. Bucky stands beside Maria Hill in the control room on the near side of the blast door, out of his cell and casually dressed and ignored by the guards. He splits his attention between screens showing aerial footage of the wrecked base in Sokovia and a news reel of a riot in a city street, the camera close in the faces of two vaguely familiar young people. Loose ends.

Hill makes requests of technicians and one calls up medical reports with Hydra’s seal. Bucky holds his left hand over the agent’s console and the display on his forearm blinks. Duplicates of the reports appear in the air and Bucky walks away with them, flipping through them at his own pace. Hill scowls. Steve is heartened, watching Bucky taking even a little bit of control and command from SHIELD.

“Please don’t tell me I have to wag my finger at you for taking off with Barnes last night,” Hill says. “That sounds really boring.”

“I think you just did,” Steve says.

Bucky looks up from his display to smile knowingly at Steve. They’ve struck this balance before, between command and desire, stowing one or the other as the situation demanded. Bucky’s coy expression suggests exactly what Steve wanted out of his day. But any private conversation they could’ve had will have to wait.

“What did we get in Sokovia?” Steve asks Hill.

“A lot,” she says. “Stark interrupted the programs deleting their files. We have most of the records of their experiments.”

“What's the word on Strucker?”

“NATO's got him.”

“The two enhanced?”

Hill points at the vaguely familiar rioters.

“Wanda and Pietro Maximoff,” she says. “The only test subjects from Strucker’s experiments with Loki’s staff who survived. Twins. Orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building. Sokovia's had a rough history. It's nowhere special but it's on the way to everywhere special.”

“Their abilities?”

“He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis,” Hill says. “Her thing is neural electric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation.”

Steve waits.

“He's fast and she's weird,” Hill clarifies.

Bucky switches his display to the footage of the riot and the twins’ faces contorted with rage. He holds it close to his eyes and when the twins look into the news camera they seem to be looking out at him.

“When we find them I want to talk to them,” Bucky says. “They need to hear it from someone who knows.”

“Agreed,” Hill says. “File says they volunteered for Strucker's experiments. It's nuts.”

“Right,” Bucky says. “What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?”

He smirks at Steve. Hill sighs.

“We're not at war, Barnes.”

“They are,” Bucky says.

Hill shrugs, conceding.

“We’d like mister Stark’s analysis of Loki’s staff as well,” Hill says. “There’s only so much sense we can make of the twins without knowing what the hell the staff is. We’ve tried to get in contact with Stark but he’s…”

Hill opens her hands in a complex frustrated gesture. Steve nods.

“Wrapped up in his work and not answering his phone,” Steve says. “Got it. We’ll go knock on his door.”

“Yes, mister Barnes is free to go with you,” Hill says. “Thank you for asking.”

“I didn’t,” Steve says.

Hill scoffs, and taps a technician on the shoulder to revisit a particular point of data. Steve leads Bucky out of the room and back down the winding hallways.

“Forgot how satisfying it is watching you work,” Bucky says.

“How’s that?”

“I don’t have to do a thing. I just stand next to you and watch the dominoes fall.”

“You do your fair share.”

They step onto the elevator and Steve presses the button for the surface. The doors close and the elevator trundles upwards. Steve crosses his arms and faces Bucky.

“So,” Steve says. “Frankenstein? You thought he’d buy that?”

Bucky laughs and claps his hands. His mismatched palms make a unique sound, but the happy strangeness brings a wide smile to Steve’s face.

“He did! He bought it, didn’t he?” Bucky crows.

“You want people to trust you or don’t you?”

“Oh come on! Lenny wanted to get one pulled over on him. That was such a stupid comic book!”

“They were all stupid.”

“That one was really stupid, sweetheart. That was one of the fake ones, right?”

“Of course it was fake!”

“Thank God. How much would I look like an idiot if you really did fight Frankenstein?”

Steve opens his mouth. Bucky catches his eyes and raises an accusing finger. Steve’s mouth snaps closed.

“No,” Bucky says.

“Nope,” Steve says. “Not even for a joke.”

“We can fuck with Lenny but you won’t ever…”

“No I will not. In the presence of God and all his angels I swear I will not tell you something happened if it didn’t.”

Bucky lowers his finger.

“Good.”

His eyes narrow and wander the middle distance in thought.

“ _Bride of Frankenstein_ ,” Bucky says. “Good flick, right?”

“Yeah. We went to see it twice.”

“Back row of the theater?”

Steve remembers nearly private darkness and adolescent courage and his breathing stumbles.

“Both times,” Steve says. “Between the two… we saw most of the movie.”

“Oh yeah…” Bucky says. “Knew there was a good reason I was thinking Frankenstein with you.”

Steve hears the elevator slow at the top of its ascent and in the seconds before the doors open he steps forward and brushes his lips over Bucky’s. Bucky gasps, then chuckles, and flicks the tip of his tongue across Steve’s lower lip. The elevator doors open and they reluctantly exit to the warehouse. 

With their feet aboveground Steve starts trying scenarios in his head, laying plans and alternate plans that would lead them somewhere beyond notice, and he loves how good it feels to be doing it. The best use he ever found for tactics was Bucky.

Steve taps on the car window and startles Cavanaugh up from his book. The doors clunk unlocked. Steve passes on the desire to open the door for Bucky and make him curse about it.

“You again,” Cavanaugh says to Bucky, faking annoyance and showing a truer smile.

“Me for quite a while, Lenny,” Bucky says. “Til they let me get a driver’s license.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Cavanaugh says.

Steve hands Cavanaugh his badge back.

“We’re heading to the Tower,” he says.

“You got it,” Cavanaugh says.

“And why would you ever get a driver’s license when you can call _him_ whenever you want?” Steve says to Bucky.

“Hardy har,” Cavanaugh grumbles. “SHIELD business only, thank you very much.”

“I’ll get my license,” Bucky says. “And then walk everywhere and never use it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Steve says.

The ride back into the city is exquisite torture for Steve. The seat between him and Bucky feels wider and more impassable than the Hudson, though in reality Bucky is so close that Steve can smell the soap SHIELD has given him. It’s something simple without frills or flavor that just draws up the sense of clean skin and Steve plants his hand on his own knee to stop his foot bouncing.

Bucky’s hand strays across the seat to drag the backs of his fingers down Steve’s thigh and Steve considers the opaque divider between the front seat and the back, which had always been open but could be closed. But with what Cavanaugh would know if he closed it, he might as well leave it open. And _try_ to survive the rest of the drive. He covers Bucky’s hand with his, and wraps their fingers together under the line of the rearview mirror.


	27. Chapter 27

It isn’t difficult to convince Cavanaugh not to wait at the Tower, not knowing how long it will take to get Tony’s attention or get him to give up anything useful to Maria Hill. There’s no sense in leaving the car running doing nothing again, Steve says. Where do you think you’re going to park, he asks. We’ll call you. Cavanaugh lets them out at the law offices and drives away.

“Someday, I’m gonna miss that guy,” Bucky says.

“I’m sure you could still be friends,” Steve says. “Think of the work you’d save finding someone else who believes your stories.”

Bucky snickers.

“If you people are willing to believe Thor I think I’ve got a shot.”

“Thor doesn’t have to make anything up.”

Steve leads them quickly through the passages under and into the Tower and Bucky follows close behind. Steve maps the building in his mind as he walks and ranks daydreams, thinking farther ahead than his steps. Talk to Tony, and then start counting precious hours with Bucky before Cavanaugh cottons on. Doors can lock in the Tower and Bucky would follow him.

Secretaries narrow their eyes at Bucky, but anyone walking alongside Captain America with roughly equal confidence must belong there, and they don’t object. Steve’s fingerprint opens the door on the private elevator and Bucky files in behind him.

“Captain Rogers, mister Stark and Doctor Banner are occupied at this time,” the walls say aloud.

“We’ll be going up anyway, Jarvis,” Steve says.

“Very good sir,” the elevator says, and the doors close.

“I thought Jarvis was wherever Tony is,” Bucky says.

“In this building Jarvis is everywhere.”

Bucky clicks his teeth, and raps his fingers on the softly rumbling wall.

“Javis is… watching?”

“Doubt it. If Tony wanted an audience in an elevator it wouldn’t… be… Jarvis…”

Steve blinks. Then punches the stop button on the elevator panel. And turns to Bucky already reaching for him. Talk to Tony after, not before.

The elevator lurches to a stop and they stumble against the wall, entangled, Bucky’s arms bringing them flush together. His left hand scrapes up the chrome wall of the elevator steadying their drift like they were dancing, like he remembers how. Steve’s hands frame Bucky’s face and tilt his chin to kiss him, starving for him, driving his tongue over Bucky’s to show him the hunger he has carried with him. Bucky’s hair tumbles over Steve’s hands and drowns him in that soft soap smell and Steve breathes it in deep to devour him, or try to.

And Bucky moans low into Steve’s mouth and drives back, takes back, flattening Steve against the wall and Steve thrills in it. With lips parted so wide they’re crushed against teeth, tongues and body weight smothering, edges digging hard into the chrome or melding into each other, they give and take in flickering abandon. Scene and setting melt away, into every place they’ve been before, every other place they’ve stolen into to steal each other.

“Are you experiencing a problem with the elevator Captain Rogers?” a voice sounds from above.

“Fuck off Jarvis,” Steve pants.

“As you say sir.”

Bucky hooks his fingers in the collar of Steve’s shirt and pulls it away from his neck. Steve tips his head back on the wall to give Bucky access and he takes it, kissing and biting softly at the curve at his shoulder. Bucky’s fingers under Steve’s collar wander, as far as he can reach, stroke over his collarbone and the top of the muscles of his chest and Steve doesn’t think, doesn’t notice, metal touching him is just touch he wants more of and Bucky’s mouth is disorienting.

He strikes nerves that send euphoria soaring through Steve and he’s so keyed up the tip of Bucky’s tongue on his skin makes him shake, it’s been so long his touch is surprising again, Bucky’s lips tickle when they move, his teeth almost make Steve burst out laughing but he can’t, Jesus, he can’t do anything that would make Bucky stop. Steve lists completely liquid on the wall, adrift in sensation and gasping half words and phrases to keep him going.

“Oh… Yes… Oh, God…”

“You liked that,” Bucky murmurs, with a slight question in his tone, and his breath raising gooseflesh on Steve’s neck.

“God, I still do…”

Bucky hums appreciatively in his ear. Thick wanting swells with every sound and every moment. Steve grips Bucky’s upper arms, feels tense muscle flex and machinery shift, both just giving instructions to Bucky’s hands, touching him, happening, repeating. Bucky licks the kisses he places on Steve’s neck and every stroke of his tongue wipes Steve’s mind clean of everything but craving more of him. Steve’s cock aches pressed into Bucky’s hip and makes him ache to touch Bucky and bring him along, higher with him. Jarvis isn’t watching and even if he is Steve doesn’t give a damn. He reaches for Bucky’s belt.

Machinery whirs and steel fingers wrap around his wrist.

“Steve… Look, we don’t have to. Ever, at all, we don’t have to…”

Steve stops. Bucky’s voice is rough, redirecting his mouth to words. They’re words he has to say, leaving room for all the time that has passed. They _were_ , but what they were they don’t have to be again.

Steve knows Bucky’s face in these moments and sees it in front of him. New dark hair curls on familiar flushed cheeks. Bucky’s eyes are glazed and his body positively vibrates holding himself back for Steve, fighting desire but hiding nothing of how much he wants to stop fighting.

Steve doesn’t need those words anymore.

“Do you want to?” Steve asks. “Now?”

Bucky’s grip on Steve’s wrist loosens. 

“Yes.”

Steve nods, and pulls out the tail of Bucky’s belt.

“That’s what matters.”

“I _can_ keep my hands to myself,” Bucky says.

“Don’t,” Steve says, and kisses him.

Bucky whines when Steve unzips his fly, moans when Steve shoves his hand under his shorts and wraps completely around his erection. He tries to resume nibbling on Steve’s neck but he can’t do that and gasp when Steve draws his cock into open air and strokes him and Steve is more excited by the sounds, loves Bucky’s huffed breath on his shoulder. Bucky’s hands dart down to Steve’s pants and hover when his fingers click on the belt buckle, then commit and he fumbles Steve’s pants open, dragging them down his hips. 

Steve’s belt clangs on the floor. Bucky grinds his hips forward and Steve’s hand on his cock is shoved against his own, opens and wraps around them both. They cry out together at the contact of hot soft skin and throbbing need and Bucky brings his right hand down to join Steve’s.

“Oh, God, I’ve been waiting…” Bucky whispers.

“I know,” Steve says. “Don’t stop.”

Bucky fucks onto him and kisses him open mouthed and sloppy. His left arm wraps around the back of Steve’s neck demanding closeness Steve eagerly gives, meeting his kiss through his stuttering breath, arching his hips away from the wall to create and maintain a rhythm that builds in their hands. Palms and fingers grip and slip in a tangled knot of pleasure, Steve’s hand and Bucky’s, his cock and Bucky’s, rocking against and around each other. 

Steve’s desire and Bucky’s command him and his body obeys, moving until he can feel the movements in a cresting wave, the tightening in his stomach, the curl in his spine. And Bucky moves him past it, Steve knows it’s Bucky’s hand fisting the head of his cock that plunges him under that wave into tumultuous orgasm, groaning and shuddering against his chest.

His come slicks both of their hands and Steve’s only stills on Bucky for his least coordinated instants, coming back to focus before he’s stopped trembling. Clear and profound relief fills him in the wake of ecstacy and he slides his hand over Bucky dedicated to pull it from him too. Bucky’s mouth opens soundless, working helpless at air. He presses his forehead to Steve’s and screws his eyes shut, thrusts into Steve’s hand fast, and when he comes his sighs wash over Steve bringing as much satisfaction again as he’d wrought with orgasm.

And they hold in the aftermath, frozen and breathing hard. Abandoned thought returns slowly, and Steve doesn’t find any regret in it. He brushes his nose along Bucky’s cheek and kisses the corner of his mouth. Bucky shakes his head and kisses Steve’s lips. He opens his eyes, spinning, until they center on Steve’s. As clean as the sky after rain.

“Oh,” Bucky says. “Okay.”

Steve smiles.

“Yeah.”

“That’s…”

Bucky clears his throat.

“I believe you,” Bucky says.

“Good.”

Bucky braces himself on his left hand on the wall and pushes away, letting cool air into the crush between them. Their bodies untangle, slick now sticky, and Bucky takes a deep breath that he lets out in a self-conscious laugh.

“We still going to see Stark?” Bucky says.

“Since we’re here,” Steve says.

“Sure. Hate to say we wasted the trip.”

Steve laughs.

“Not a waste if you ask me.”

He bends down to pull his shorts out of his pants. Their hands caught most of their mess and Steve can sacrifice one piece of clean clothing for it. Steve wipes off his hand, and draws the fabric down Bucky’s softening cock just to watch him twitch.

“God dammit…” Bucky mutters.

“Sorry,” Steve lies.

“Remind me to pick up a handkerchief so you don’t have to use your shorts again,” Bucky says, taking them from him to wipe his fingers.

“I’ve got spares,” Steve says.

Bucky chuckles.

“You have many trysts in the Tower?”

Steve shoves him, and reaches down to pull up his pants.

“I have to change in and out of the uniform,” Steve says. “No need to make anything else out of it.”

Bucky shrugs, puts himself away and refastens his pants.

“Well it’s not as though I expected you to wait for me.”

Steve’s stomach fills with lead.

“Don’t. Please.”

Bucky swallows and looks away from him.

“Alright.”

“I was in a really good mood until you said that.”

“Yeah. I’ve gotta be the spoilsport.”

Steve wraps his arm around Bucky’s waist. Their bodies still radiate warmth from passion, and Steve holds Bucky close in it. Before it fades.

“I wasn’t waiting,” Steve says. “Just didn't have it in me.”

“Alright. You don’t have to talk about it. Like you keep saying.”

Steve nods. If Bucky is around the Avengers long enough he might find out about unrequited crushes and awkward moments and he won’t be surprised. But it’s not relevant in his arms. Steve tilts his head, asking Bucky to kiss him, and Bucky answers him, pressing their lips together. That still works.

“Next time we’ll plan ahead,” Steve says.

“Maybe further ahead than fast and cheap in an elevator,” Bucky says.

Steve pulls out the stop button on the elevator panel and it resumes its journey upward.

“I’m gonna let you get away with saying that was ‘cheap’ because I like you so much,” Steve says.

Steve wraps his shorts in a tight ball and Bucky chuckles. Steve glances over at him and Bucky’s sly smirk starts wanting twisting in Steve’s gut all over again.

“Aren’t I lucky?” Bucky says.

After everything. Steve doesn’t argue with him. Bucky is the unluckiest bastard who ever lived. But if there is any part of being with Steve that can make him forget it, Steve will give it to him.

When the elevator doors open at the top of the Tower Steve shoves his shorts in a trash can.


End file.
